"Banyak orang ingin menggunakan VPN untuk privasi—itu penting—tetapi kami tahu bahwa beberapa anak menggunakannya untuk menghindari pembatasan": Pemerintah Inggris mempertimbangkan larangan VPN

In the UK, the Online Safety Act now requires that websites verify the age of its users through checks often carried out by third-party vendors. Personally, I'm trying to avoid handing over either scans of my government ID or face as long as possible and, so far that's resulted in me being locked out of my Bluesky DM's. Though not ideal, it's easily remedied by hopping onto a VPN—though future restrictions could mean I'll have to rethink that strategy.

The UK government is considering an Australia-style ban on social media for under-16s, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer saying that the ban could take effect as soon as spring next year. As for the much nearer future, Science and Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told BBC Breakfast earlier this week, "We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions."

To be clear, no specific restrictions have yet been announced and Kendall sounded somewhat cautious about an outright ban during a parliament debate that took place the same day. "I have commissioned further research about their usage. There are really important issues to balance here," she says. "Many people want to use VPNs for privacy—that is important—but we know that some children use them to get around restrictions. I will come back to that in July in our response to the consultation."

So, we'll have to wait until next month for anything definite, but it's hard not to feel like a full ban on VPNs is already on the table. If that does come to pass, more than the contents of my Bluesky inbox will be at stake.

Utah in the US has already tried to implement a full VPN ban (though this was postponed until September after Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub, challenged the law in court). The Electronic Frontier Foundation criticised the Utah's proposed ban back in May, saying, "The legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally. This would subject millions of users to invasive identity checks or blocks to their VPN use, regardless of where they actually live."

In other words, the UK could just be the next domino after Utah, potentially setting off a chain reaction that affects users around the world. Obviously, VPNs are used for more than getting around age verification checks to clap eyes upon your direct messages or 'adult material.' As a journalist, VPNs can also be a hugely valuable tool to protect my privacy online.

Age checks themselves can be a privacy nightmare in themselves, with the security breach that exposed the personal info of 70,000 Discord users last year being one case in point. To quote Evin McMullen, co-founder of age verification provider Privado ID, many age verification methods "are over exposing data to prove a simple point." Our Jacob spoke to McMullen as well as a number of other age verification specialists to explore some of the alternatives to our current privacy nightmare.

On one hand, I do understand some of the thinking behind the UK's planned ban more broadly—I won't pretend that having completely unfettered internet access in my youth was only ever beneficial. However, as I've written about before, I'm sceptical that age verification checks or other attempts to seemingly quarantine children online is the route to take. To echo the words of my wider PC Gamer colleagues in this group piece, instead of locking the kids out of online communities, perhaps world governments should make any attempt at all to better regulate social media giants.