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Comment by ndsipa_pomu | Hacker News Reader

That annoys me as the VPN isn't necessarily bypassing the age check, but instead is allowing the person to pretend that they don't live in a country with stupid laws. I mean, Ofcom might as well warn parents about cheap holiday websites that encourage people to bypass the age checks by flying to a sane country.

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Yes? I expect that "take a weekend to France to bypass age verification" and "subscribe to NordVPN to bypass age verification" are both legal while "take a weekend to France to see the Eiffel tower" and "use NordVPN to increase your security" are both legal.

Did you never wonder why VPN ads don't really list any actual use cases, yet they're wildly popular? If you know what you need it for, the ad doesn't have to tell you - just has to tell you which company to give your money to.

VPN ads do list actual use cases. The most popular one I've heard is geolocation-based pricing on airline tickets.

(I still don't really know what people are actually using VPNs for.)

For instance, VPNs are popular in Russia, people use them to access YouTube, Instagram and other platforms banned by the regime.

Torrenting; multi-accounting.

I don't use traditional VPNs for this, but I use tailscale with an exit node back at my house to avoid Netflix complaining about my location changing.

VPN ads talk about bypassing streaming region locks all the time.

and they don't actually do that because streaming services know which addresses are VPN exits and block them or use your last location

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