VPNs aren’t hard to detect, especially if you’re using a major service.
Youtube can detect VPNs now... the fuck?
Submitted 1 day ago by DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/f7986ede-db6b-4d18-8a26-5cf18acab2ff.jpeg
Comments
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Shameless@lemmy.world 1 day ago
100% this, I work in cyber sec and it’s very easy these days for services to detect this.
tazeycrazy@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Feel sorry for the guy in the datacenter using Netflix on his brake.
parody@lemmings.world 1 day ago
using Netflix on his brake.
Offering Xzibit some new ideas
TommyJohnsFishSpot@lemy.lol 1 day ago
Must be hard to see all the way down in the foot well.
utopiah@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I mean… detecting (some) VPNs is as trivial as
fetch(‘https://github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/raw/refs/heads/main/output/vpn-ipv4.txt’).then( res => res.text() ).then( res => console.log( res.includes( “1.2.3.4” ) ) )thanks to github.com/NazgulCoder/IPLists/
FWIW though I did try, connected via a random VPN from ProtonVPN from Argentina… and it wasn’t in that list. So it’s not perfect. Also ProtonVPN has apparently today 13K servers according to protonvpn.com/vpn-servers
That being said I can imagine that Google, which is literally built on crawling the Web, has all the infrastructure and expertise needed to have such lists and up to date ones.
I’m not justifying blocking VPN here, only trying to clarify that unless you self-host in a rather specific setup (i.e. not relying a popular cloud provider but truly self hosting) it’s technically not hard to block VPNs.
heavy@sh.itjust.works 48 minutes ago
Understanding is the first step to fighting draconian policies.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 44 minutes ago
Yeah, detecting the VPN isn’t really difficult at all. VPN providers sometimes try to cycle through IP addresses to make it harder, but there’s only so much they can do.
This isn’t really noteworthy, especially when you consider how many services require a sign in when you’re on a VPN anyways. It’s shitty, but not really surprising; They want to be able to tie your traffic to you, not just to a random VPN server. Hell, even without signing in, they probably have your browser fingerprinted. If you’re privacy focused, you probably have a lot of privacy based extensions, in a privacy based browser. And that makes you easy to fingerprint.
Bennyboybumberchums@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
They always could. What appears to be happening is that channels now have the option to turn on “a switch” so that content wont play if a VPN is detected. Most VPN ip addresses are well known, because they arent a secret. Everyone who uses the VPN goes through it.
If you come across the above message, its because the content creator turned it on. I had it come up with “stick to football”. Its the only thing that it comes up with. I just unsubbed and wont watch anymore. Im not turning off my VPN for anyone or anything. Id rather just go with out. I encourage all of you to do the same.
GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 13 hours ago
You could probably just record the users ID an it’s IP address. IP addresses that see a lot of different user IDs are either VPNs, companies or universities.
fatalicus@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Or they are just home users behind a CGNAT, which more and more ISPs use.
And even if they aren’t, home users usually have dynamic IPs, meaning it can change.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Another thing that only very large companies can do is see the response time and compare packet size from different servers to narrow down your location, effectively defeating the VPN in a lot of cases.
Hypothetically, a specific amount of bytes gets sent to server B, response time indicates it was received 300 miles away which matches the response time of going from Server B to Server A where the user lives.
Of course it’s still important to use a VPN, if only because those big companies don’t want us to.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
This isnt new. Its been happening for years. There is a post about this on lemmy every few weeks. It just doesnt happen consistently, so people always think that they “discovered” this for the first time.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
But this is even dumber than before, you can’t even login to bypass. What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
What about people living in a country where youtube is blocked. I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
Yyep.
If you’re using a VPN, you’re likely anonymized and not directly making YouTube any money. So they don’t care.
SARGE@startrek.website 1 day ago
I guess Google just says “fuck 'em”?
Yes, 100%, absokutely correct.
Google is a company.
Companies do not care about you. You are not a person, you are a number.
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
I see. I havent had a Google account for like 8 years, so i didnt notice the difference.
hcbxzz@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Probably part of the age verification bullshit
Smokeydope@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A few days ago I gotta message from google saying they “can’t verify my age” (meaning they want gov ID I’m sure) so I’m forced to use safe search and other stuff too.
Fuck. That!
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 11 hours ago
Oh, so what they’re really saying is that a platform owned by GOOGLE has trouble FINDING the best content?
Everyone knows.
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
If you find what you’re looking for the first time, they don’t serve you as many ads.
FreddiesLantern@leminal.space 9 hours ago
Can’t argue with that, there goes my oneliner 🤣
skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
When I see content blocks like that anymore, I just leave the content behind and go elsewhere. Malicious companies will not get my clicks. They can fuck right off.
Good sign though, means they are getting desperate. It is our duty to starve them of traffic.
definitemaybe@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Sure, but there are also lots of other ways around it. Non-chrome browsers (or Chromium-based browsers) still allow for good extensions that can block YouTube ads.
Firefox + uBlock Origin still works great, even when all the front-ends are broken.
Kissaki@feddit.org 1 day ago
The real highlight is the contradictory text.
To continue, turn off your VPN/Proxy. This will allow YouTube to locate the best content".
“We refuse to serve you anything other than the best ‘located content’.”
A fat lie. Combining refusal with the completely unrelated supposed service improvement of location-based content.
Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 hours ago
disingenuously sound like they’re doing you a service
That’s the Google guarantee!
Mattr@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
It’s time to switch to Newpipe or Invidious, YouTube clients focused on privacy, without adverts and without Google’s clutches.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Been trying out Invidious lately. Nice stuff if it is not down for a reason or two.
Oh! Speaking of a devil. It is down right now!
Zwrt@lemmy.sdf.org 7 hours ago
Yeah, i even made a script just to log into its container (proxmox lxc) and pull the latest image when i see video stop loading.
It’s almost always google actively changing things, sometimes directly targeting invidious.
What did also helped was give its container 2 cpu cores rather than just 1. The internally errors and timeouts causes by google changes cause a big strain on it so it often crashed in combination with needing an update (leaving me unable to backup my up to date subscription list)
rosco385@lemmy.wtf 9 hours ago
I haven’t used Invidious, but I’ve never had.an issue with PipePipe being down.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
The “best content” being ip-located ads, probably.
Etterra@discuss.online 16 hours ago
probablymassacre@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
TIL ads are content!
macaw_dean_settle@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
youtube sucks ever since googol bought it. I cannot believe people still use it.
buttnugget@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Google bought YouTube in like 2006. I liked it before they bought it, sure, but I would be hard pressed to say it’s been all downhill after the first year.
Xylight@lemdro.id 21 hours ago
I encounter VPN blocks everywhere frequently. I usually just reroll my selected server until the block goes away
moopet@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Tip: Peertube Companion is a good extension for directing you to duplicates of the video you’re trying to watch if it can be found elsewhere.
reddifuge@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Well they need to make sure the right people are watching the right propaganda.
BussyCat@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
They lobby both parties, people are just talking about the Trump donations now as he is currently in power
Saprophyte@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
That only covers political donations, not outright payoffs.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 11 hours ago
If money is speech, what is a company “saying” when it donates to both parties?
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 18 hours ago
My ISP has started throttling YouTube to ~2mbps when viewed from desktop. Using a VPN gets around this and lets me watch in HD. Luckily I’ve not encountered this error yet, but if I do I guess it’s no more YouTube for me, 480p is just way too blurry to put up with.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Why would your ISP do that?
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
to save bandwidth
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 18 hours ago
They’re 5g based, so I suspect it’s within the terms of service somewhere that they can limit the streaming quality? Historically I’d only ever noticed deprioritization, never a hard bandwidth limit.
butterycroissant@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
I wonder if there’s any workaround besides VPNs like changing DNS or something?
COASTER1921@lemmy.ml 58 minutes ago
I use 1.1.1.1 so I don’t think it’s easily ignored by changing DNS. But interestingly while using Revanced and NewPipe on my phone I don’t have any of the same problems. Maybe my computer is ignoring my router’s DNS? Maybe mobile YouTube is delivered from a different server? I wish I new but ultimately using a VPN still works for me and is a very low effort fix.
What I don’t get is why it’s only YouTube they choose to throttle. I’ve never noticed any issues on other streaming websites and fast.com which literally uses Netflix servers is also full speed.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 17 hours ago
Phone->revanced
Smart tv->smart tube next
I don’t ever watch YouTube on my laptop but I’m sure there are utilities available.
tym@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I love that this complaint is posted to Lemmy: a platform that forces me to pause my VPN to make a comment.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Using Tor right now, no idea what you are talking about… oh right you use that instance.
.world =/= “Lemmy” 😉
thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yeah, world is kinda shitty for that
scarabic@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
VPN ads seriously need to stop promising that you can get around content restrictions.
brax@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
People should educate others on how to get content not available in their area for fee without the hassle.
If media isn’t available in your area, then the company is telling you they don’t want your money. There is a $0.00 loss to them if you pirate it.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Unless you calculate it using the Nintendo formula, in which case you owe them $3 million.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 20 hours ago
Or they need to do a better job at getting around content restrictions
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 20 hours ago
Yeah they need to start rotating egress ips regularly. It’s a cat and mouse game
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org 1 day ago
This happens via simple lists of IP addresses, no? I.e. the VPN has a limited number of exit IPs and once it’s known who they belong to, they’re easy to block?
utopiah@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I have a Tridactyl rule to rewrite YouTube URL to
youtube-local(repository github.com/user234683/youtube-local/ ) e.g. www.youtube.com becomes localhost:9999/https://www.youtube.com but as others have suggested, I do my bet to avoid YouTube entirely, because Google is bad, Big Tech is bad.canofcam@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Everything detects VPNs. Reddit has an error screen I’ve never seen before about network activity when I use a VPN and I’m not logged in. YouTube refuses to let me watch embedded videos when I’m on my VPN. Many pages simply refuse to load.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 56 minutes ago
Reddit?! Okay, that’s pretty terrible. It’s one thing to have region-locked copyright for stuff, but disallowing VPNs for a web forum? While we don’t need more evidence that they’ve turned heel, that’s an awful big red flag.
lostoncalantha@lemmy.world 1 day ago
As someone who uses multiple VPNs daily I have a suggestion. Try to locate a different server and connect to it. See if there’s a drop down menu in your VPN app. Sometimes a particular IP on one of those servers flags websites’ fraud detection. Sometimes I can switch servers on my VPN and refresh the page and it loads just fine.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Excellent advice. It’s a game of cat and mouse (or whack-a-mole, whatever metaphor works…).
Sites that want your data for whatever reason hate VPNs, so they identify exit points and blacklist traffic from them. VPN providers know this so they spin up new exit points with different IP.
Just try a different server. Sometimes it’s a regional ’rights’ issue, so pick another server that is in the same jurisdiction, for instance in the case of streaming.
foggianism@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
I watched youtube religously 10-15 years ago. Now when I try to enjoy some content, I struggle to find anything of quality that’s in my feed. Sometimes I’m scrolling for 10 minutes and give up. Their algorithm for what might interest me was so much better back then.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 21 hours ago
raman_klogius@ani.social 1 day ago
If only you don’t serve ads containing literal porn to my face with my VPN off 😡😡
the_tab_key@lemmy.world 1 day ago
😮 you use a vpn to avoid porn? That’s a novel use case.
Illegalmexicant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I block porn with my firewall so I have to VPN to get around it.
viking@infosec.pub 18 hours ago
Huh? I don’t use a VPN unless I want to watch geoblocked content, and adblocking works just fine without.
Dreaming_Novaling@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
Couldn’t you just use uBlock and/or NextDNS/PiHole to avoid porn ads rather than use a VPN?
raman_klogius@ani.social 14 hours ago
This is for the mobile app. On desktop I already use uBO.
TheMinister@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Dude, I seem to find more sites that break when using my VPN than those that allow it. The bastards are winning
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
I’ll change servers a couple times, and if it still doesn’t work, I’ll just move on
Rooty@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
At this point no corpo site is worth the hassle.
starlinguk@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m surprised it took so long, I’ve not been able to watch Channel 5 for years.
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 23 hours ago
See, there is the problem, if you use a VPN you dont allow Google to locate the best content! Nothing to see here, YouTube is only trying to be helpful here, Google is absolutely not trying to use you as a data nugget to get rich from
cley_faye@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
People don’t realize how much shit youtube/google ignores over time, for whatever reasons (but mostly because it’s cheaper to ignoer I’d guess). With most major consumer VPN providers, this is very easy to detect. Adblockers are easy to detect. Tampering with the website structure? Believe it or not, quite easy to detect when someone hide a component or change a title or a button.
If they decided to seriously get after people that circumvent geofencing, people that block ads, people that change the interface to their liking, or people that plainly use alternative websites, they could easily. And it would require far less effort on their end to keep things complicated than it would require on our end to keep things working at an acceptable level.
survirtual@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Only kind of true.
If they did implement all those measures, all you do is launch a puppet browser rendered off screen and scrape the content you want. This could work for any site and it is impossible for anyone to detect.
For ads, as a nuclear option, you can detect when they occur and black the stream out.
I would personally do this if left with no other option.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Cue detection of “realistic” human activity on the UI and preventing streaming if the server determine this activity does not match a human enough pattern.
I’m exaggerating on that one, but… that’s not even that implausible these days.
My point was, dancing this dance with “big website”, whoever it is, will always be an endless uphill battle.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 20 hours ago
Sometimes I do get YouTube telling me that I need to disable my adblocker to access a video, so they do try to block that stuff (though I suspect that the infrequency with which this happens combined with the fact that not everyone does experience it when some people do report this happening suggests that they’re just testing methods of detection and blocking)
Usually when it happens, I just go into my Ublock settings and update stuff. I can’t remember that ever not working. It feels like a low-key arms race, in a cold-war kind of way
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
i use vorapis v3 cause they fucked with the video player.
fin@sh.itjust.works 17 hours ago
locate the best content
Hell nah, please dont
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
definitemaybe@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Pipepipe has been more reliable for me, lately.
But who knows how long these alternative front-ends will last? It’s a constant cat and mouse game between volunteers and Google.
hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 hours ago
“This will allow Youtube to locate the best content” 🤡
kamen@lemmy.world 46 minutes ago
But I don’t want the best content.
Credibly_Human@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
It’s so insulting they add flavour text like this as if to call you a fucking moron to your face
SoloCritical@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
“We know what’s best for you”