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A new survey of 1,469 adults, which was conducted by the child protection focused Lucy Faithfull Foundation, has “warned” that 45% of adults who don’t want to verify their identities to access porn – a requirement of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) – have turned to using sites without age checks. In addition, 29% have used Virtual Private Networks to bypass age checks on sites that have them.
The foundation expresses concern about this because those adults turning to riskier sites are said to be more likely to see child abuse images, although they didn’t provide enough solid data to substantiate that the sites being visited by such respondents actually fall into that category. Lest we forget that opinion surveys like this, with small sample sizes, are also notoriously unreliable.
Sky News reports that the foundation, which has the noble aim of working to stop people viewing child abuse images, also commissioned another survey of 3,724 adults in November 2025. This study revealed how 39% of the people who had visited “unregulated porn sites” had reported seeing content that made them uncomfortable (sadly, no details were included to better define this), and 40% had been put off visiting the same site again.
However, it’s important to remind readers that it is NOT illegal for UK adults to view pornography, but under the OSA it can become illegal if it involves children, non-consensual acts, bestiality, or extreme content like realistic depictions of serious violence (e.g. strangulation). The Age Verification requirements are largely designed to help prevent children accessing such content, although it also creates problems for adults (more on that later).
Kerry Smith, CEO of the Foundation, said:
“It’s highly concerning that age verification measures are not being implemented on certain platforms. Safeguards on pornography sites are essential to protect children from accessing pornography, which we know, if viewed at a young age, can normalise harmful sexual behaviours and leave children more vulnerable to grooming from predators.
There needs to be strong enforcement of the OSA to ensure robust and meaningful safety measures are put in place on pornography platforms, including the use of deterrence messaging and signposting for adults to appropriate support services.
We would also encourage the government to bring in even more robust legislation, so online pornography is treated just as it is in the offline world.”
An Ofcom spokesperson said:
“Change is happening, and the tide on online safety is beginning to turn for the better. Last year saw important changes for people, with new measures across many sites and apps now better protecting UK users from harmful content, particularly children. But we need to see much more from tech companies this year, and we’ll use our full powers if they fall short.”
Overall, it’s hardly surprising or controversial that many adults do not want to have to share their private personal or financial details with unknown and unregulated third-party age verification providers, particularly when those services are associated with porn peddlers. The infamous Ashley Madison hack showed just how dangerous such information could be in the wrong hands (countless cases of blackmail and suicide etc.).
In response, many adults have indeed been adopting VPN services and other methods in order to avoid age verification (e.g. using them to change the geographic location of their active IP address and mask the real connection), which works because a lot of sites will have different access rules to respect the different laws of different countries via the same website domain.
Several government MPs have even called for the nuclear option of banning VPNs to stop circumvention of the rules (here), which could potentially have far-reaching consequences as VPNs are also legitimate tools for businesses, journalists and to help protect people when abroad or on public networks etc. But officially, the government says there are “no current plans to ban the use of VPNs“, although plans can and often do change.
As for non-compliant porn sites, Ofcom does have the power to impose significant financial fines, although there remains a question mark as to how much impact this will have on non-UK based sites. The regulator could also ask broadband ISPs and mobile operators to block the sites at network-level, although this would have little impact on VPN users.
Once again, it is not illegal for adults to watch porn. The regulator’s CEO, Dame Melanie Dawes, recently revealed (here) that, “following the 25th July deadline we saw a spike in [VPN] use – with UK daily active users of VPN apps temporarily doubling to around 1.5 million. However, usage has since plateaued, and has now fallen back to around 1 million by the end of September“.
Ofcom previously said that the key question they will be monitoring (though they admit “it is hard to measure“) is whether VPN use is rising among children. Data from Internet Matters, collected before July 2025, suggests that around one in ten under-18s used VPNs, with use skewing towards older teenagers. No surprise there – this is the group likely to feel most aggrieved by the new approach, since there are few things more annoying than being 15-18 years old and treated like you’re 5.
At present, both of the largest political parts remain fully supportive of the OSA, thus there’s currently little in the way of effective opposition to any future mission creep in this area. Please note that we won’t be able to approve any comments on this news article that appear to directly promote specific VPN services, due to the risk that this could clash with the government’s recent warnings about such promotions (here).