UK Official Calls for Age Verification on VPNs to Prevent Porn Loophole

A U.K. government official wants tougher rules to stop kids from using VPNs to dodge the country’s latest online safety laws.

The Online Safety Act, which went into effect this summer, puts new legal pressure on online platforms, including search engines and social media sites, to protect users from harmful content. The laws are mostly aimed at keeping children away from porn and other “harmful” material tied to self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders.

One of the act’s main provisions is that pornography sites and platforms with user-uploaded content must use technology to verify or estimate a user’s age. That typically means requiring people to upload a government-issued ID or a photo of themselves to prove they meet the age requirement.

But users have already found ways around these new digital checkpoints. Some crafty gamers discovered they could use the photo mode in Death Stranding to trick age verification systems on Reddit and Discord. Most, though, are simply turning to virtual private networks (VPNs), which reroute internet traffic through servers in other countries and hide a user’s real IP address. That makes it easy to get around the age verification requirements.

Interest in VPNs spiked in the UK the week after the laws took effect on July 21, according to Google Trends. Now, one official is pushing to close the VPN workaround.

Dame Rachel de Souza, England’s children’s commissioner, told BBC Newsnight on Monday that VPNs are “absolutely a loophole that needs closing” and called for age checks on the services themselves.

In a new report, de Souza recommended requiring age verification for the use of VPNs. The report argues the move would help stop underage users from accessing porn. A survey conducted right before the law took effect found that about 70% of children had seen pornography online, with X (formerly Twitter) cited as the most common source.

The report also flagged the violent nature of much of the porn kids are exposed to, with 58% of respondents saying they had seen porn depicting strangulation before turning 18, and 44% reporting seeing depictions of rape of a person sleeping.

“This is having an impact on children’s view of what is normal sexual behaviour,” the report argues.

A government spokesperson told the BBC that there are no plans to ban VPNs, “but if platforms deliberately push workarounds like VPNs to children, they face tough enforcement and heavy fines.”

In the U.S., nearly half of the states have passed laws requiring porn sites to use age verification systems. Nine states have also approved rules forcing social media platforms to demand either age checks or parental consent for minors.