I recently saw that in Brazil, people who use VPNs to access X/Twitter after the ban could apparently be fined. I’m no expert whatsoever, but isn’t the whole point of VPNs to encrypt all of your activity? If so, how would the offenders, so to speak, even be caught and fined??
In: Technology
One can tell a VPN is accessing a site, but they can’t tell who is using it. Unless the VPN company keeps logs and can be subpeona’ by the government that wants it.
This is obviously a very oversimplified explanation, but think of a VPN like this: If you’re wearing a neon striped shirt, everyone can easily see who you are at a glance. But if you wear a really boring black hoodie (a A VPN), just like a thousand other people nearby, then you’ll be nearly invisible. But, if you do something to draw attention, people can still look closely and find out who you are, and the guy who sells the black hoodies knows and could rat you out if asked.
So in this example, only one group of people is banned from going into the shop. With your hoodie on, they can’t see that you are a part of that group. The shopkeeper doesn’t question you. He doesn’t care about the ban, he just wants to sell stuff, so he’s putting minimal effort into enforcing it.
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With very careful monitoring and surveillance of an individual, patterns can be found and traced, but it’s not realistically enforcable and it can’t be done en masse. For example if a VPN is always accessed at the same place, and at the same time as a notorious dealer is active, then now you can figure out who they are.
Some high-profile criminals have been caught like this, but only because they were dangerous or stupid enough to draw attention.
More likely is people will give away they’re using twitter by their posts and conversations, and they might get in trouble.
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