By David Buchanan, 27th July 2025
Edit: I've changed the title of this post from its original and slightly more inflamatory "The UK is Poised to Ban VPNs", because it seems to be getting popular and I don't want to see a million people arguing over it.
As of July 25th, internet users in the United Kingdom are being asked to prove their age before accessing many of their favourite apps and websites. Here's Reddit, for example:
On agreeing, the user is redirected to a 3rd party data broker service, where they are asked to provide biometric face scans, official identity documents, or a similar measure. Merely entering your birth date doesn't cut it anymore!
You have a choice to make. Do you comply with these new requirements, or just find something else to do with your time?
Well, no, there's a third option of course: circumvention
Yoti in the #3 spot is an app that provides identity verification services - it's what you might use if a website was forced to verify your age. Notably it is behind ProtonVPN and "Super Unlimited Proxy" in #1 and #2 respectively, with many other VPN apps further down the leaderboard.
I can't find good statistics on the age distribution of App Store users, but I think we can assume the majority are adults. So, I'd expect App Store trends to be largely driven by adults.
From this I'm inferring that the majority of UK internet users (regardless of age) are picking privacy over compliance. I hope in the near future there'll be some more concrete stats I can cite.
I'm genuinely and pleasantly surprised by this. I thought people would just hand over their personal data to the first popup that asked for it (and I'm not being facetious here).
What worries me is what could happen next. Embarrassed legislators desperately trying to patch up the loopholes in their approach, to save face?
Whatever happens, VPNs will be under significant legal and political pressure going forwards. This could put us in a very dark place with regards to online privacy and civil liberties. Even darker than we already are.
Ofcom (the regulator in charge of such things) has already said that "platforms must not host, share or permit content encouraging use of VPNs to get around age checks."
The only way this can end well is if we Repeal The Online Safety Act.
Failing that, at the very least we can demand regulation of the "age assurance" industry.
P.S.
VPNs kinda suck too! They are not a panacea when it comes to privacy or security, especially the free ones. See Don't use VPN services for more. For UK internet users they are presently a lesser of two evils, but even then I would not advise routing all your traffic over one.
Firefox Container Tabs are a great way to selectively route certain websites over a VPN.