Home » UK ISP News Archive » Article Tag: Internet Privacy (403 Posts)

Articles for Category Tag - Internet Privacy

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Government Set to Restrict UK Children’s Use of Internet VPNs and Social Media UPDATE

16th February, 2026 (52 Comments)

The UK Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, has today proposed last minute amendments to two Bills that will enable the Government to set a minimum age limit for social media (i.e. greater use of Age Verification), as well as options to age restrict or limit children’s use of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), where it “undermines safety protections and changing the age of digital consent“.

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UK Mobile Operators Blocked 97.1 Million Scam SMS Messages in Jan 2026

12th February, 2026 (5 Comments)

Industry trade body Mobile UK, which represents EE, O2 and VodafoneThree (Vodafone and Three UK), has revealed that mobile operators have, to date, blocked an overall total of 2.7 billion scam SMS (text) messages (2,761,912,183 to be exact) from reaching customers and 97.1 Million of that total occurred in January 2026 alone.

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BT Backs New Apple iOS 26.3 Feature to Limit UK Location Data on Mobile

28th January, 2026 (13 Comments)

Apple’s next major iOS software update for iPhones – v26.3 – looks set to include an interesting new feature, which aims to improve user privacy by limiting the amount of location data available to mobile network operators. The move is apparently set to be supported by EE (BT) in the United Kingdom, although no other UK operators are currently named.

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House of Lords Votes to Ban UK Children from Using Internet VPNs

26th January, 2026 (64 Comments)

Last week saw the House of Lords pass a vote that would, if approved by the Government, introduce an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill (CWSB) that aims to “prohibit the provision” of Virtual Private Network (VPN) services to children (under 18s) in the UK. The goal is to stop children allegedly using VPNs to bypass age verification systems.

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Survey Warns a Third of UK Adults Use VPNs to Bypass Internet Porn Age Checks

7th January, 2026 (26 Comments)

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.

DDoS Attack Disrupting Users of Youfibre and Other UK Broadband ISPs UPDATE3

28th November, 2025 (20 Comments)

Customers connected to UK ISP Youfibre (and other ISPs) on one of the country’s largest alternative full fibre (FTTP) broadband networks, Netomnia (Substantial Group), are currently understood to be experiencing “intermittent connectivity or slower-than-usual performance” due to an ongoing Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Concern as UK Broadband ISP Brsk Hit by Major Customer Data Breach

27th November, 2025 (31 Comments)

Alternative broadband ISP Brsk, which last year merged with Netomnia’s growing multi-gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network (here), has reportedly been hit by a major data breach that is claimed to have resulted in 230,105 customer records being exposed to hackers. The database has since been put up for sale.

NordVPN Launch Call Protection Feature for Android Users in the UK

20th November, 2025 (3 Comments)

The NordVPN service, which is a familiar Virtual Private Network (VPN) provider, has today announced that they’ve expanded the availability of their Call Protection feature (formerly known as scam call protection) – initially only available across the USA – to also cover Android users in the United Kingdom and Canada. Support for iPhone users is coming soon.

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New Cyber Security and Resilience Bill Introduced to UK Parliament

12th November, 2025 (5 Comments)

The UK government will today introduce their new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill (CSRB) to parliament, which aims to toughen existing defences against cyberattacks – particularly those that impact the health, energy, water and transport networks – and imposes new requirements on broadband, mobile, managed service providers, data centres and even their suppliers.

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Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK Adds Identity Protection to Security Add-on UPDATE

11th November, 2025 (5 Comments)

Internet, TV and phone provider Virgin Media (O2) and security partner F-Secure have today announced that they’ve now begun offering customers of their optional (paid) ‘Advanced Security’ add-on service an additional “Identity Protection” feature, which is designed to help prevent identity theft.

Ofcom Monitoring UK VPN Use Due to Circumvention of Online Safety Act

11th November, 2025 (66 Comments)

The UK telecoms and internet content regulator, Ofcom, has revealed they’re using an unidentified third-party monitoring tool – seemingly with AI capabilities – to track the public’s use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) tools as part of Government concerns that they’re being used to circumvent internet censorship measures under the Online Safety Act (OSA).

Major UK Phone Providers Agree to Crackdown on Scam Calls and Fraud

5th November, 2025 (12 Comments)

A new landmark Telecommunications Charter has today been agreed between several of the UK’s leading broadband, mobile and phone providers, which commits BT (EE), Virgin Media (O2), VodafoneThree, Tesco Mobile, TalkTalk, Sky (Sky Broadband) and the Comms Council UK to a “crack down on scam calls and fraud“. A sub-charter also exists for B2B phone services.

ISP BT to Launch New AI Anti-Virus Service for Small UK Businesses

30th October, 2025 (12 Comments)

Broadband and telecoms giant BT has announced that they’ve partnered with cloud-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to launch a new AI-powered antivirus service for their small business customers – Business Antivirus Detect and Respond (BADR), which is designed to “proactively stop threats before they become breaches” (every AV solutions could be described this way).

Ofcom UK Propose New Rules to Tackle Mobile Messaging Scams

29th October, 2025 (12 Comments)

Ofcom has today announced a “comprehensive package of planned measures” that are designed to improve protection for mobile phone users against messaging scams. According to the regulator, some 50% of UK mobile users said they received a suspicious message between Nov 2024 and Feb 2025 via text or iMessage, but it’s hoped today’s changes may reduce that figure.

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Survey Claims Half of UK Broadband Users Leave Routers Open to Cyberattack

24th October, 2025 (28 Comments)

A new survey of 3,242 UK internet users, which was conducted on behalf of Broadband Genie and supported by McAfee’s cybersecurity researchers (inc. threat intelligence data), has claimed that millions of people could be leaving their home networks open to hackers because 47% fail to change ANY of their router’s default settings.

Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK Sees 285 Percent Rise in Phishing Threats

20th October, 2025 (5 Comments)

Broadband, phone and TV provider Virgin Media (O2) and their security partner, Akamai, have this morning warned that they’ve seen a 285% rise in phishing attempts this year. This figure has jumped to a huge 232,365 average new phishing threat entries to their threat intelligence feeds each day between April to June 2025.

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Virgin Media O2 UK Claims 1.8 Million over-65s Have Fallen for Online Scams

7th October, 2025 (7 Comments)

Broadband and mobile giant Virgin Media and O2 has this morning published new research, which claims to reveal that more than 1.8 million people over the age of 65 have been scammed online in the past year, with the average victim losing £831. In response, they’re launching a free Scam Schools programme with sessions “across the UK” to help Brits get safer online.