Ofcom report: daily VPN users in the UK jumped to 2.2M, up from 1.2M before the introduction of laws enforcing age limits on pornography sites in July 2025
Regulator Ofcom finds evidence of children using the technology to get around age checks — Use of virtual private networks in the UK …
Context & Ripple Effects
UK age-assurance rules initially coincided with a sharp fall in traffic to major pornography sites, while Ofcom recorded a temporary rise in VPN use. By December, Ofcom said pornography traffic remained below its pre-check level and VPN use had eased from its August peak.
This report adds evidence that circumvention has become a more material part of the policy’s practical outcome: daily VPN use is now far above the pre-rules baseline, and Ofcom has found signs that children are using it to bypass checks. Related EU coverage identifies the same issue as an age-verification loophole.
First-order effects
- Age checks are being bypassed by a growing pool of UK VPN users, weakening the immediate effectiveness of location-based enforcement for at least some users, including children.
- Ofcom gains fresh evidence that the age-assurance regime’s outcomes cannot be assessed solely through declines in traffic to compliant pornography sites.
Second-order effects
- Compliant sites face a more uneven competitive environment if users can evade UK checks through VPNs while non-compliant services or offshore access routes remain available.
- Regulators and platforms will face pressure to improve age-assurance enforcement without treating VPN use itself as proof of illegitimate activity, since VPNs have uses beyond bypassing content controls.
Third-order effects
- The episode exposes a persistent tension in national online-safety rules: obligations imposed on services can be undermined by cross-border routing tools unless enforcement and service compliance work across jurisdictions.
- If repeated across age-restricted services, policy debate is likely to shift from deploying age checks to measuring circumvention, coverage gaps, and the trade-offs of tighter technical enforcement.
The trend: This is part of a broader shift from introducing online age-assurance mandates to confronting the enforcement gaps created by borderless services and user-controlled privacy tools.