Age Verification Laws Send VPN Use Soaring—and Threaten the Open Internet
1 min read
Summary
The UK’s Online Safety Act, which came into force on Friday and requires adult websites to verify users’ ages, has seen a surge in the use of VPNs.
This is not unexpected because similar trends occurred when such acts were enacted in other countries.
VPNs and other circumvention tools allow users to get around the age-verification requirements by masking their location.
There are other unintended consequences too, such as using a game photomode to take a selfie of a character to submit to access an age-restricted forum.
Proponents of the law say that they are seeing progress, with over 6,000 porn websites already introducing age checks.
The ACLU’s Daniel Kahn Gillmor warns, however, that such measures could be enforced more aggressively in the future, and people should be looking for quick technological fixes when it comes to protecting children online.
