Survey Warns a Third of UK Adults Use VPNs to Bypass Internet Porn Age Checks
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.
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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.
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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).
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Should have read the T&C and privacy notice of the age checker. There are ones that use the on-device verification so your selfie is not sent back to the server.
Only a third?
The rest didn’t want to admit it! I mean…. Any such content found on their devices must have been put there by a friend! They would never look at such content! Honest Guv!
Who would have thought people will just start use VPNs.
I think this age check will inadvertently promote non-UK, non-compliant sites. Before age checks, one could just go to PornHub and do whatever needed to be done. And if something illegal was uploaded there, it was clear who to go to to get it removed. The non-compliant sites will be also non-compliant when it will come to removing illegal material and there is no realistic way to block them. Yet, this legalisation is driving traffic to them by making them easier to access than fully compliant sites.
Oh dear. How sad. Never mind.
1. Why would you ever pay for porn?
2. Why would you ever furnish porn sites with your details (name, address , age, credit card, IP)?
3. Why would any government that has actually assessed the *ahem* “porn crisis” believe that porn is “consumed”(?) solely through bureaucratic means?
This whole thing stinks of a mix of ignorance and incompetence.
I think it’s a safe bet that a great deal of porn is shared between people on various platforms including Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, and whatever else.
But, it lets superfluous politicians and state organs pretend at doing something useful while fundamentally wasting taxpayer resources so that they can earn political brownie points, whil ushering us closer to a police state that outlaws encryption (goodness forbid the state can’t spy on you).
TL/DR: It’s a good thing that more people are using VPNs to add a layer of protection between themselves and whatever they’re doing on the internet. And no,there’s nothing good, safe, or noble behind the spuriously-named “Online Safety Act”.
Why would you pay for porn;
1. Because some sites its content is so good you feel dreadful pirating it and want to pay for it.
2. Because there can be a significant delay between the video going up on the site and it being shared through piracy sites
3. Because some sites make viewing the content easier on the own site – this applies in particular to VR porn sites like SLR that have its own app to make viewing it very easy.
4. Because some sites actively search every filesharing website and get their files removed in 24 hours.
5. Because some sites a subscription price is so low you feel why should I even pirate it.
6. Because some sites have so much content even a 20TB hard drive wouldn’t fill it.
The age checkers I’ve looked at do not ask you to supply “details (name, address , age, credit card, IP)”, although some of the news articles covering this story suggest that they do. The law asks the website owners to do the bare minimum of ensuring that minors can’t access this content. Asking people for their name and address does not help them achieve this requirement.
Its a total mine field with these age checkers, some just ask to scan your face and it makes a guess of your age and that is it. Another wants a photo of your passport and it wants to scan the chip inside your passport (I kid you not) so you have to hold your phone over your passport chip. Another site wants your credit card details, and it must be credit card, as debit cards are refused. Another site demands you pay them a pound via a credit card, another site asks for your NI, bank details, sort and account number, and DOB and home address. That was the one I said, no way to. I was fine with my passport being scanned but drew a angry refusal at the last one for some reason.
I am not interested in the sites that require age verification although the articles online that suggest how many people access certain sites gives the game away that there are organisations that monitor everyone’s internet usage and sites they visit.
Because more people are now aware of monitoring by ISPs or whoever ISPs are sharing data with more people have realised the importance of a VPN to make it harder for big corporates/government to monitor everything anyone does online.
Shot themselves in the foot.
Hear-Hear! I’m wondering if those who should not be looking at restricted sites think of it as a challenge to gain access and boast of their successes to their peers. Perhaps that’s why VPN usage seems to be plateau-ing?
Since the OSA came into effect, a good number of porn sites now say “Sorry we do not allow people from the UK to view our site”. Even things like Grok wont allow its AI mechanism to properly work in the UK and has much stricter moderation policies for people using it in the UK – something that proudly pops up telling you every chance it can get. Plus some porn sites have really dodgy looking verification systems that give off the vibe its nothing but a dodgy phishing attempt. What does the UK government expect people to do in the above instances?
I suspect Grok would be more worried about prosecution for poiducing child porn images.
But that would apply to the USA too. From what I have read online the UK has been singled out from every other country by Grok with its own very strict moderating system to block way more than the rest of the world.
Yeah it’s right to warn that 71% of people are putting themselves at risk. The government need to run a campaign to warn people that they should never ever use online age checks of any kind and certainly do not give their private identity documents to anyone. Furthermore they need to educate people how to access sites that may ask for such information without putting yourself at risk.
Exactly this!
It’s funny when the Government actually has it backwards and they are trying to promote a system that makes sure they are tracked monitored and putting there data in systems that are already proven wide open to data theft.
I would say that alot of the VPN users might know what they are doing.
I just use my imagination as material anyway, porn content nowadays are too rushed, skipped and too straightforward. Barely bother watching it before ID thing happened
Are the government also estimating the use of the Tor browser to achieve the same end?
One method of verification is to provide a selfie, I sent one of Santa Claus and passed verification.
Absolutely no chance am I linking my porn habits to a legit ID, absolutely never happening and it’s more about the bloody cheek of it more than anything
What huge OSA success, who would expected this?
There should just be one OSA age verification system and it be heavily mandated and monitored by ofcom so it doesn’t get abused by its owners. The fact that each porn site can create their very own verification system renders the whole thing moot, laughable and so very dangerous as it opens everything up to so much potential fraud and distrust. I have noticed at least 10 different providers so far and I am not a heavy user of adult sites. I am amazed credit card fraud has not gone through the roof since July. Or maybe it has and the government is forcing banks to not report it. I wouldn’t put it past Starmer to do that.
No, there should be no age verification at all. It does nothing vut make the internet a more dangerous place. The whole OSA is just state control. Education is how you get online safety, but that’s something the ever-leaning right governments dont want you to have either…
Here we go. The governments ill thought out online safety bill might not work. Next they’ll want to ban VPN’s. Maybe people don’t want adult companies to snoop on them and are uncomfortable giving them sensitive information.
What did they expect? I said this from the start – people WILL NOT hand over their details for them to be tied to their porn watching habits! Now imagine how big of a target gets painted on porn sites for cyber criminals. Hack in, get the data and blackmail/extort users that verified themselves, because you could release their porn habits to the world.
Ban VPNs? How are you going to identify someone connecting to a server vs using a VPN? What about legitimate security uses like for businesses? Good luck with that – even dictatorships and totalitarian states have failed.
Granted there are limits, but even as kids we managed to get hold of nude magazines or find porn VHS tapes. Then it was on phones and then on the Internet. It’s a nice idea, but impossible to implement effectively and expensive for what it is.
It’s a big old mess and ultimately a waste of money. It does however concern me that it’ll set a precedent for further censorship in the future, with this potentially being a nicely wrapped up “dip toes in the water” moment to get the public on-side so the system is in place… I mean who would argue that children should be able to access porn right? But then tied to your digital ID, the government now know an awful lot more about you… tinfoil hat theory perhaps, but plausible.
Yeah I’ve come to believe this is not just a misguided attempt at protecting children, but really all about exploiting the current moral panic to introduce more surveillance and control. They did it with terrorism in the wake of 9/11 and they are doing it again now.
There is worse to come as they are coming after encrypted messaging this year. If WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal etc stick to their promise not to introduce backdoors and client-side spyware we may see all of these services de-facto banned in the UK this year leaving only unsecure messaging apps on the app stores. (Of course actual criminals will side load secure apps and be unaffected.)
Wikipedia has also promised not to collect user data for the government which may see it banned or access limited to UK users (I think they need to be under 7 million hits to be exempted).
No doubt VPNs will be on the hit list too. But as you say there are limits to this as even China/Russia etc can’t stop people using them. However, what worries me is that this entirely depends on there being free countries in which to host the VPN servers. Authoritarians across Europe and America are pushing hard for similar laws to the ones the UK has introduced.