this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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How would they know the person using that VPN or VPS is from Wisconsin? That's the only place this all applies to.
They wouldn't, but they would know the person is hiding their true location and state back to the user as such. Some web sites will go to that level and some won't.
But then Wisconsin would be obligating every website in the world to block every VPN in the world. I'm pretty sure you can see how that's not legally enforceable.
No, just adult ones.
Like I said, some sites will go to this level (as in they already do) and some won't. It just depends how popular and visible the site is and how likely they feel they are to be targeted by an over-zealous attorney general, and if the potential fine is larger than the lost revenue or not. And it doesn't even have to mean revenue loss. They could just say "you're connecting from a VPN so you have to provide your ID regardless" so that they're compliant.
I'm not saying Wisconsin will legislate that all sites do it (although they can actually pass whatever stupid rules they want as long as they can convince judges not to strike them down as unconstitutional). I'm saying larger commercial sites (think Fansly and OnlyFans and sites like that, not free tube sites) can, and already do, detect if you're connecting from a VPN provider or cloud provider and then ask you for ID if you do regardless of its geographic location, in order to ensure they are compliant with all these state ID laws. Because they have too much revenue at stake to risk an AG like Ken Paxton coming after them over it.
Are you under the impression that web sites can't detect when you're connecting from a VPN? Here's a site that provides information like all of Proton VPN's server IPs around the world.
https://www.netify.ai/resources/vpns/proton-vpn
Here's how to find Amazon Web Services public IP ranges
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/aws-ip-ranges.html
It is 100% technically possible for web sites to detect that you're connecting through a VPN or from a cloud service provider network and respond accordingly.
Of course there are, but I was replying to a comment that said basically well we can just VPN out of Wisconsin and so the sites won't know we're from Wisconsin so they won't enforce Wisconsin's laws! And my response was not so fast, there are sites that see you're from a VPN connection and instead say "oh we don't know where you're connecting from so we're going to collect your ID." That's it.
I'm not suggesting anything technical about the internet. I'm observing what some companies are doing technically with respect to VPN usage. I have speculated, when asked, as to why these companies may be doing what they are.
Agreed.
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