UK will be blocked early July 😢

[Doccer19677]

Nord for me, set to usa

[brnbk]

This is just very sad. The UK has joined authoritarian countries of the Middle East and China etc.  by this stupid policy. 

Western cultures is based on sex. How are you going to eliminate what is an intrinsic part of your cultural heritage and fabric?

The Brits need to loosen up a bit!  

We should probably send a protest letter to the Prime Minister and even the King, maybe!

[cFFw1976]

Sex is not the issue here .... the issue is topics of chems, chemsex, pozzing, illegal and punishable stuff you can be sentenced to jail or death ...what we like to would be punish by law in every country etc...

Might be fairly normal for us this blog ( sometimes not and pretty shocking) but for the vast majority of the UK and even much of the LGBTQ community much of what we like and do is abnormal .. its different... so is not about same sex people having sex... it's much more beyond that and I totally understand the blockage of the site... just a VPN solves the issue 🙂

[rawTOP]

19 hours ago, Monorchid said:

I saw the blocked site and have now swapped to VPN.

16 hours ago, SpectreAgent said:

In the UK and can only access you via a VPN

16 hours ago, sleazebugga said:

Yep, like be in UK have VPN and can only see breeding zone if I log in from another country. 

Thanks guys for confirming that the block is working. 

[sluttony]

23 hours ago, rawTOP said:

The UK should now be blocked. Let me know if you're in the UK and seeing this without a VPN…

Blocked fine. Currently using Brave's built in Tor. VPN also works.

[sluttony]

3 hours ago, brnbk said:

This is just very sad. The UK has joined authoritarian countries of the Middle East and China etc.  by this stupid policy. 

Western cultures is based on sex. How are you going to eliminate what is an intrinsic part of your cultural heritage and fabric?

The Brits need to loosen up a bit!  

We should probably send a protest letter to the Prime Minister and even the King, maybe!

There are two ways to view this. Currently kids have unfettered access to pornographic/adult oriented websites. This isn't authoritarian in the same ways as you mentioned above. RT had the option to find a mechanism to verify users coming from the UK are over 18. He chose (wisely in my personal opinion - I gave a number of reasons above) not to.

Grindr chose to partner with a third party to take photos of your face and use (presumably) 'AI' to determine if you appear over 18 or not with a promise that the facial data would not be kept. Grindr have the funds to do this and there has to be an element of trust to keep using the site.

So this isn't quite the same as countries where access to porn - or more specifically gay porn - sites has been blocked. Prove your age and off you trot.

Now the flip side is that it's a flawed system. Any and all "nannying" technology is because whatever they can think up can be circumvented. 

Much more worrying to me - and something I would encourage everyone to take an interest in and be prepared to voice dissent over is the constant attempt by successive home secretaries (going back to at least Theresa May) to backdoor encryption. And sorry folks but this backdoor action ain't fun.

Here's a quick and dirty analogy of how encryption works for websites.

Top and Bottom want to exchange some secret info. Top has a padlock and a super-complex key to said padlock. Bottom have their own padlock and super-complex key.

Top takes the information he wants to send and puts in into a secure box. He then puts his padlock onto it and sends it to Bottom.

Bottom receives the box and checks that, visually, it looks ok and untampered with. At this point, Bottom puts his padlock on and sends the box back to Top. The box now has both padlocks on.

Top receives the box and again checks to ensure there's no obvious tampering. At this point, Top unlocks his lock and takes it off. He then sends the box back to Bottom. 

Once again, Bottom checks the box and then takes of his lock. The box is now open and the contents are available to Bottom.

This is basically what we refer to as private-public key infrastructure.

The padlock is publicly viewable. No one cares. The key though...that's the private, secret, part. Only you have it. There should be no copies.

What our lovely gov is suggesting though, is that they, and only they have a key that can open any padlock at any time and no one will ever even be able to tell.

HUGE problems:

1 - No fucking way I would trust any government anywhere, ever, to not wholesale open boxes and take a peek

2 - What stops them altering the contents? The recipient would have almost no way of knowing.

3 - And if those two things don't send you cold, this should. No backdoor ever remains in the hands of the *cough* "good guys". Criminals will, with 100% certainty crack it. 100%. Guranteed.

I would argue that if they push this through we need a law that says everyone - and I mean everyone - from politicians to banks to the military and police have to use this broken encryption. Watch them come up with excuses why there should be exceptions... no. If it's such a good idea then make it punishable by law not to use it. NO EXCEPTIONS!

"But think of the children! You must love protecting paedophiles and terrorist." is the tired argument they roll out.

Of course no right minded individual wants to perpetuate child abuse but the sad fact is that most abusers are already known to their victims. Then there's the fact that even when presented with overwhelming evidence (look up Jimmy Saville or the grooming gang issues we've had). 

The same is true of terrorists etc - they are almost always known about. Almost always already on some kind of watch list. And yet...

No this is a sledge hammer to crack a walnut for sure but it's not on the same level as any of the above.

<phew>

 

[mort]

On 4/2/2025 at 2:32 AM, Sfmike64 said:

The answer is to use a VPN. I've been doing this since Louisiana did this a while back. 

Free ones exist, but even paid ones don't cost much. I use one called Windscribe.  VPN makes it appear that you're in another place. Most VPNs have many choices. I'm currently connected to one in Los Angeles.

This is another reason why these laws are stupid.

 

A lot of places are blocking this so it wont be a usable method.

 

The whole thing is a control mechanism it's nothing to do with child safety (This is the same sort of model they use in lot of asian countries)

 

On 4/2/2025 at 9:19 AM, sluttony said:

Personally I use both NordVPN and Surfshark depending where I am and what I am doing. They're both cheap and fall into the non-logging category* with plenty of options to appear to come from other countries.

*Use some sense though - there tend to be two kinds of VPN provider: Those who log your activity and those who claim that they they don't log your activity.

nord/surfshark are same company both are ok nothing special and a lot of there servers are first to get blocked.

 

 

It's a shame this place has to constantly keep messing about because of silly laws in different countries and glad it has not closed.

 

Edited 23 hours ago by mort

[allrise]

I am using NordVPN to access this.

i am disappointed I need this round about way.

[rawTOP]

@sluttony - assuming the devices themselves aren’t compromised, the only way I know for governments to break the encryption is to run a proxy firewall like China does. This site will break and be nonfunctional if it encounters that scenario as some users have reported when trying to hit the site from inside a corporate firewall.

And VPNs get around proxy firewalls. Which then means the government has to ban VPN apps and block the IPs when it identifies them. I’m headed to China in September and there’s a lot of discussion among tourists as to which VPNs work and making sure they’re installed before landing in the country. There’s also eSIM cards that somehow get around the firewall, but I’m suspicious of them. I feel like the Chinese government may be giving tourists a rope and letting them hang themselves with it. 

[sluttony]

11 hours ago, rawTOP said:

@sluttony - assuming the devices themselves aren’t compromised, the only way I know for governments to break the encryption is to run a proxy firewall like China does. This site will break and be nonfunctional if it encounters that scenario as some users have reported when trying to hit the site from inside a corporate firewall.

And VPNs get around proxy firewalls. Which then means the government has to ban VPN apps and block the IPs when it identifies them. I’m headed to China in September and there’s a lot of discussion among tourists as to which VPNs work and making sure they’re installed before landing in the country. There’s also eSIM cards that somehow get around the firewall, but I’m suspicious of them. I feel like the Chinese government may be giving tourists a rope and letting them hang themselves with it. 

Oh you're using certificate pinning? Not many sites I've come across doing that. Nice one.

[FF69]

I use Proton - works well so far. Pleased to be able to access BZ again.

[BBBttmPete]

On 7/3/2025 at 6:45 AM, kitpig said:

Likewise, I’m not that IT savvy, but NordVPN worked for me!

I'm using that too. I love this site

[Tommy Tank]

Still managing to access the site - only because I have "relocated" myself to Germany!