In the wake of the implementation of the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act—legislation that introduced stringent and, to many, burdensome age verification requirements across the internet during the summer—it took remarkably little time for determined individuals to find methods of avoidance. Within days, a variety of creative, often humorous evasion strategies began spreading rapidly across social media platforms. One of the more widely shared exploits involved leveraging the photo mode in the video game *Death Stranding* to outwit face-recognition scans used for online age checks. Yet despite these imaginative experiments, the simplest and most enduring tool soon proved to be the most effective: virtual private networks, or VPNs.
VPN technology, long known for its ability to encrypt user data and obscure geographic location, rapidly became the public’s method of choice for circumventing the UK’s new digital gatekeeping. By masking a user’s actual IP address and simulating a network connection from another country, VPNs effectively caused regulated websites to behave as though the user were outside the reach of British law. The BBC noted that just a few days after the new rules took effect, five out of the ten most-downloaded free iOS applications were VPNs. Providers themselves shared extraordinary surges: WindscribeVPN disclosed a dramatic increase in users, NordVPN reported an astonishing one-thousand-percent spike in purchases over a single weekend, and ProtonVPN observed an even greater eighteen-hundred-percent rise in new UK subscriptions.
Such drastic growth predictably drew the attention of lawmakers and regulators. In political circles, quiet discussions soon evolved into open concern about whether the government’s flagship child-protection initiative had been inadvertently undermined. Some officials began to describe the flourishing of VPN adoption as a direct threat to the integrity of the Online Safety Act. Enacted in 2023 but only fully operational as of July 2024, the OSA compels websites, content platforms, and online services to implement what the law calls “robust age verification” systems designed to restrict users under eighteen from accessing harmful or adult-oriented material—content primarily encompassing pornography, instructions related to self-harm, and similar categories. In practical terms, the law now requires that UK users of a wide variety of sites, ranging from adult entertainment providers to mainstream social networks such as Bluesky, must verify their age through mechanisms like credit-card validation or biometric scanning before obtaining full access. It is therefore little surprise that many citizens opted to install VPNs rather than submit to intrusive verification measures involving facial data or financial credentials.
The government’s own Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, lent official weight to these growing concerns. Speaking to the BBC in August, she described VPN access for minors as “absolutely a loophole that needs closing.” Her office subsequently issued a report urging that VPN software itself be brought under the same type of “highly effective age assurance” requirements originally mandated for content providers—a move that would effectively place VPN services beyond the easy reach of minors. Her warning, punctuated by the phrase “Nothing is off the table,” made clear that policymakers were considering a broad range of potential enforcement tools.
De Souza’s stance resonated across the political spectrum. Members of the House of Lords questioned why VPN circumvention had not been more comprehensively anticipated during the drafting of the law, and some lawmakers proposed amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to incorporate age verification directly into VPN access. The call for stronger regulation did not emerge suddenly: as early as 2022, Labour MP Sarah Champion had cautioned that virtual private networks could “undermine the effectiveness” of the entire Online Safety regime and had urged the previous government to investigate practical solutions to prevent precisely this scenario.
Amid this growing pressure, a report by *TechRadar* further fueled speculation, asserting that Ofcom—the UK’s communications regulator and primary enforcer of the OSA—was quietly “monitoring VPN use.” The publication could not verify the exact scope or methodology of this monitoring, but Ofcom representatives contended that fears of direct surveillance at the individual-user level were misplaced. An anonymous spokesperson clarified that the regulator collaborated with a well-known data analytics provider and that the collected information was aggregated, containing “no personally identifiable or user-level data.” Still, as data scientists have long argued, anonymized datasets can often be reidentified through cross-analysis, leaving some critics skeptical about these assurances. Nevertheless, the research is intended to help determine the extent to which children, specifically, are using VPNs to circumvent age checks—a question likely to require months of careful study before clear results emerge.
Officially, government representatives have maintained that there are no immediate intentions to outlaw VPN usage altogether. Baroness Lloyd of Effra, a minister representing the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, told the House of Lords that the administration had “no current plans to ban the use of VPNs, as there are legitimate reasons for using them.” Yet her subsequent remark—that “nothing is off the table”—left observers unsettled, implying that restrictions remain a plausible future scenario. A total prohibition, for instance through requiring internet service providers to block VPN traffic at its source, appears improbable for both technical and political reasons. Despite the moral fervor surrounding online child safety, few policymakers or industry experts advocate for such drastic measures, and even the government acknowledges the many legitimate, security-focused uses of VPNs unrelated to pornography or age-controlled services.
Ryan Polk, policy director at the Internet Society, elaborated on this legitimacy, explaining that virtual private networks fulfill a multitude of indispensable roles in the modern digital ecosystem: corporations employ them to provide employees with secure remote workplaces, journalists rely on them to protect confidential sources and communication, activists and marginalized individuals use them to evade surveillance or harassment, and casual users appreciate them for safeguarding personal data, improving connection stability, and enhancing gaming performance. Each of these legitimate functions underlines why a blanket ban would provoke significant backlash and prove logistically difficult to enforce.
Technical experts echo this skepticism. Laura Tyrylyte, head of public relations at Nord Security, noted that attempts to suppress VPN usage are “technically complex and largely ineffective.” James Baker, a program manager for platform power and free expression at the Open Rights Group, summarized the practical challenge even more succinctly: “It’s very hard to stop people from using VPNs.” The architecture of the internet simply makes it impractical to detect or consistently block encrypted tunneling traffic without producing unacceptable collateral damage to legitimate online activity.
Some policymakers have nevertheless floated the idea of compelling websites covered by the OSA’s restrictions to reject all incoming traffic from known VPN servers, much as streaming platforms sometimes do to enforce geo-blocking. But as Polk explains, this approach presents service providers with “an impossible choice.” Given that there is no reliable method to distinguish between a British user concealing their identity and a legitimate foreign visitor, platforms would be forced either to exclude all traffic originating from the United Kingdom—thereby forfeiting access to that market—or to lock out every VPN user globally, punishing countless innocent users for the actions of a few.
Consequently, policymakers now appear to view the prospect of age-verifying VPN services themselves as the most practicable avenue. Since the OSA already forbids online platforms from promoting VPNs to minors as a way of dodging age restrictions, expanding those provisions to encompass the VPN tools directly might be considered a logical extension. Theoretically, this adjustment would be comparatively straightforward to implement, yet it carries significant drawbacks. Both Tyrylyte and Baker warn that any such strategy could inadvertently push users toward far riskier practices—whether through sketchy, unregulated VPN providers that compromise privacy by monetizing user data, or through pre-digital file-sharing habits such as copying material via USB drives, which carry their own security risks. Indeed, they note that this shift may already be in motion, since paid VPNs typically require credit card payment, effectively steering underage individuals toward free alternatives whose business models are opaque at best. As Baker succinctly observed, “free VPNs are often free because you are the product.”
The United Kingdom may have been among the earliest adopters of online age verification laws, but its experiment now serves as a harbinger for global debates over how far governments should go in policing digital identity. Similar discussions are emerging in multiple jurisdictions. Australia has already imposed social media prohibitions for users under sixteen, the European Union is testing its own digital age safeguards, and several American states have enacted online age limitations. Unsurprisingly, VPNs—still the most powerful and accessible workaround to these restrictions—are becoming the next target of legislative scrutiny. In the United States, the political tides are shifting as well: legislators in Michigan have floated an internet service provider–level ban on VPN technology, while those in Wisconsin are debating proposals to compel adult websites to block VPN-associated traffic altogether.
Wherever one happens to live, the trajectory is clear—concerns surrounding VPNs are only beginning to intensify. The current surge of panic surrounding virtual private networks represents less an isolated British phenomenon than the early stage of a much larger global conversation about privacy, security, and the limits of governmental authority on the internet.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/tech/827435/uk-vpn-restrictions-ban-online-safety-act
