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A senior British official has called for age verification requirements on virtual private networks (VPNs), warning that they are undermining the country’s new Online Safety Act by allowing minors to bypass restrictions on pornography and other harmful content.
Imagine a VPN (Virtual Private Network) as a secret, secure tunnel between your device and the internet. Instead of sending your data out in the open where anyone could peek, the VPN wraps it in a layer of encryption—like sealing your information inside a locked box—before it travels to the VPN server and then to the rest of the internet.
This means your online activity becomes much harder for hackers, advertisers, or even your internet provider to track. It’s like having tinted windows for your digital life—people know you’re online, but they can’t see what you’re doing.
A VPN can also help you slip past “digital borders.” Let’s say a streaming service is only available in another country. By connecting to a VPN server located there, your internet traffic looks like it’s coming from that country instead of your real location. Just like using a mailing address in another city to get exclusive local offers, a VPN gives you access to websites and content that might otherwise be off-limits where you live.
Dame Rachel de Souza, England’s Children’s Commissioner, told BBC Newsnight that VPNs are “absolutely a loophole that needs closing,” and urged Parliament to amend the law so that VPN services themselves are covered by age assurance rules.
The recommendation appears in her office’s latest report, “Sex is kind of broken now: children and pornography,” which details how young people access explicit material online and how it shapes their perceptions of sex.
The Online Safety Act, which took effect this summer, requires porn sites, search engines, and user-content platforms to deploy age verification or estimation technologies—such as government ID uploads or facial scans—to restrict minors from harmful content.
But usage data shows that VPNs have surged in popularity since the law came into force on July 21. By masking a user’s location and rerouting internet traffic through foreign servers, VPNs allow both children and adults to circumvent the new digital checkpoints.
“Within a day of the new rules being in place, VPN use in the UK was platformed as an easy workaround,” the report states.
A pre-law survey cited by de Souza found that 70% of children had seen pornography online. Among them, 58% reported seeing porn depicting strangulation before turning 18, and 44% said they had seen depictions of rape of a sleeping person.
“This is having an impact on children’s view of what is normal sexual behaviour,” the report warns.
A government spokesperson said there were no plans to ban VPNs outright, but warned that “if platforms deliberately push workarounds like VPNs to children, they face tough enforcement and heavy fines.”
The proposal has already drawn sharp criticism from digital rights advocates and industry groups. Mike Stabile, public policy director for the Free Speech Coalition, called the idea “appalling.”
“A government requiring users to identify themselves in order to use a VPN renders much of a VPN’s privacy preservation pointless,” Stabile said.
“Rather than shift to alternate, more effective, privacy-preserving solutions, they’re doubling down—asking internet users to sacrifice more and more freedom online. Historically, this doesn’t end well.”
Civil liberties organizations echoed those concerns, warning that extending age checks to VPNs would have sweeping consequences.
Jim Killock, Executive Director of the Open Rights Group, said requiring IDs for VPNs “would gut one of the few tools that keeps journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens safe online.” He added: “VPNs are not just used to watch porn—they are used to protect people working under repressive governments, to safeguard health and financial data, and to keep whistleblowers safe. Age-gating VPNs risks turning a privacy technology into a surveillance tool.”
Privacy International, another UK-based watchdog, warned that forcing ID checks for VPN access could normalize intrusive monitoring of everyday internet use.
The UK is not the first European nation to grapple with the VPN loophole.
In France, where porn platforms were ordered to adopt “double-blind” age verification earlier this year, regulators reported a sharp spike in VPN downloads immediately after enforcement began. By May 2025, surveys found that VPN use among French teenagers had doubled compared to the year prior.
In Germany, where regulators have tried to block access to Pornhub and YouPorn using DNS manipulation and financial restrictions, many users quickly migrated to VPNs. Industry watchdogs admitted that technical workarounds had blunted the effectiveness of their bans, even as courts upheld the blocking orders.
In much of the world, VPNs are more than just a convenience for streaming or bypassing porn filters, they are lifelines for free expression.
In Iran, VPNs are essential for women’s rights activists and journalists reporting on government crackdowns. During protests in 2022 and 2023, when authorities throttled or shut down social media platforms, VPNs were the only way many Iranians could communicate with the outside world.
In Russia, where websites critical of the Kremlin are frequently censored, VPNs allow citizens to access banned news outlets such as Meduza and BBC Russian Service. VPN providers themselves have faced increasing pressure, with several services outlawed under new “foreign agent” laws.
In China, where the “Great Firewall” blocks nearly all foreign social media platforms, VPNs—though technically illegal—remain a necessary tool for students, researchers, and businesses to access global resources.
Human rights groups argue that requiring identification for VPNs in liberal democracies like the UK could set a precedent exploited by authoritarian governments. “If Britain normalizes age checks for VPNs under the banner of child protection, regimes in Beijing, Tehran, or Moscow will use the same logic to crush dissent,” said one campaigner with Access Now.
VPNs are widely used not just for entertainment or adult content access, but also for data security, public Wi-Fi protection, and journalistic work in restrictive regimes. Requiring IDs to use them, critics argue, could endanger vulnerable users worldwide and effectively erode one of the last tools available for anonymous internet use.
Meanwhile, in the United States, more than 20 states have passed age verification laws targeting porn sites, with some extending to social media platforms. In Tennessee, the rules go further still, requiring ID uploads every 60 minutes to maintain access.
De Souza has framed her proposal as a necessary child protection measure.
“This report must act as a line in the sand,” she said. “The findings set out the extent to which the technology industry will need to change for their platforms to ever keep children safe.”
But is it ever really about keeping children safe? Or is it more about control? That's the real question.
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