Original article ISPreview UK:
The UK government has warned that online platforms which “deliberately target UK children and promote [Virtual Private Network] use” could now “face enforcement action, including significant financial penalties“. The statement comes after many people – ironically mostly adults – rushed to adopt VPNs to avoid the wide adoption of age verification.
As regular readers will already know, the UK’s new Online Safety Act (OSA) – a product of both the past and present governments – includes a requirement for age verification. The government and Ofcom would of course have you believe that this is all about restricting access to the naughty bits of the human anatomy (porn), but as we’ve previously warned, the rules go much.. further.
NOTE: The Act and its codes are far-reaching and will touch many websites and online services (big and small alike – major social networks and small personal blogs). But it’s also true to say that Ofcom lacks the resources to monitor everything, thus their focus is likely to be fixed on the worst offenders and major firms.
Ofcom recently began enforcing the requirement for age verification and, unsurprisingly, this meant that people suddenly woke up to a heap of online services all wanting to scan their faces and collect credit card details (among other methods) – often via unfamiliar third parties – before allowing them access.
Want to retain access to your music streaming account at Spotify, or risk having it deleted? You must age verify. Want to access all your existing private messages and contacts on the Bluesky social network? You must age verify. The same quickly became true on TikTok, a favourite of the younger crowd, and YouTube, among many.. many other services.
The OSA’s rules are so broad that they apply to all sorts of internet sites/services and content, which go well beyond the core remit of porn and occurs at a time when most of us have long been conditioned to share as little personal and financial data as possible with online platforms (especially social networks where real names aren’t always used) – due partly to the sadly all too common risk of data breaches.
Suffice to say, many adults do NOT want to have to share personal or financial details with unknown third-parties just to be able to chat with family members/business contacts or listen to the latest music. But the government’s sledgehammer approach leaves no alternative, potentially fuelling the risk from cybercrime and making it harder for people to control their data.
In response to this many younger people, and seemingly many more adults, have been flocking to adopt VPN services in order to get around age verification.
What is a VPN?
VPNs allow you to create a secure connection to another network over the internet. Many people use them (you can even setup your own proxy/VPN) as an additional means of helping to secure their connection against hackers or prying eyes, which is particularly vital when accessing a network that you don’t trust or haven’t used before (e.g. public / hotel wifi). Businesses also use them to help employees access their work remotely. Yours truly does both of those via a VPN, a vital service for a journo.
However, it’s also true that VPNs – as well as various other services – can be used for circumventing website blocks by ISPs, age verification systems (i.e. many AV systems only apply to IPs originating in the UK) and tackling geo-blocking; such as by adopting an IP address from another country.
Sadly, hackers and spammers also use them to conceal the true source of their attacks, which is a notable downside. We should also point out that third-party VPNs, despite their claims, may not all be 100% trustworthy and secure from prying eyes.
What’s all this about punishment?
The government clearly aren’t happy with age verification being so easily defeated (not only by VPNs but also via various other methods – fake pictures etc.), which is far from being either a new or surprising development – the weakness of age verification has long been somewhat of an Achilles heel in the whole approach.
Meanwhile, the government, which probably aren’t doing themselves many favours by branding opponents of age verification as supporting porn and worse, are now warning people not to even promote the use of VPNs.. or else (there are exceptions for editorial news articles like this).
A government spokesperson said:
“Platforms have a clear responsibility to prevent children from bypassing safety protections. This includes blocking content that promotes VPNs or other workarounds specifically aimed at young users.
Where platforms deliberately target UK children and promote VPN use, they could face enforcement action, including significant financial penalties.”
None of this is to say that we disagree with the principles of the OSA. We don’t. But while placing stricter controls over things like porn and illegal content is perfectly understandable, extending AV to everything from Spotify to private messaging services and general discussion forums is, in many cases, going too far. A form of censorship by the backdoor, since many adults do not want to age verify via unknown third-party companies.
All of this also ignores the fact that treating under 18’s, particularly teenagers in the 15 to 18 range, like they’re all five years old is going to be hugely insulting for many of them. The government might yet regret giving many in this group the power to vote.
Meanwhile, a handful of MPs have previously gone so far as to suggest that VPNs should be banned to stop circumvention of the rules, which would be an incredibly dangerous precedent for a democracy to set. Mercifully, the government has confirmed that they are not currently planning to do this, although plans can and often do change with time.
Both the Conservative and Labour parties currently remain supportive of the OSA, while Reform UK has called for it to be completely repealed (unnecessary as it can be amended to deliver on the bits that work – the act also does have a lot of public support).
Finally, the Liberal Democrats will put forward an emergency motion to their Conference asking for a “pause and rethink of the OSA given what we have seen“. The party highlights threats to wiki and free exchange of information, LGBT+ websites being blocked and “heavy-handed implementation” by Ofcom. In fairness, the regulator is only following what the law tells them to do.
Please note that comments on this news article have been closed, as we’re currently unsure about the liability if anonymous posters start using it to promote VPNs.
