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Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility

802 points · 405 comments · hn_acker

SoftTalker · 1790960547 · focus · HN ↗
> platforms are left with an impossible choice: completely block all VPN traffic nationwide or withdraw access from Utah entirely
Is it even possible to reliably know that a connection is from a VPN? Anyone can proxy through a random hosting provider.
1. gorgoiler · 1790968067 · focus · HN ↗
  The classic: ping the endpoint address, then “ping” the code. If the IP address comes back in 30ms but the JavaScript responds in 330ms, then the client is probably 300ms further away than they say they are claiming.
  1. zbentley · 1790979099 · focus · HN ↗
    Or they’re on a computer that’s doing something intensive, swapping, or in low power mode. Or they have a browser extension that does stuff before scripts run. Or their cache is emptier than usual and they’re spending a long time doing an initial fetch of the latest ad tracking package your site installed. The list goes on. That’s far too noisy a signal to decide block-or-not based on. Good enough to try to sell someone faster gear, maybe, but not more than that.
  2. patrakov · 1790987557 · focus · HN ↗
    This will also catch a SIM card in roaming, which is not a VPN.
    someonebaggy · 1791028354 · focus · HN ↗
    except it is literally a VPN, actually. That's why it would have that characteristic. Except actually it wouldn't, because the test described only catches proxies at L4 and higher. It would catch a lot of CGNATs.

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