As of July 25, 2025, if you're attempting to access adult content online in the UK, you'll need to verify your age to do so. This is due to new child online safety laws which are attempting to prevent minors from accessing inappropriate content online.
However, many people within the UK are turning to some of the best VPNs in order to circumvent these laws by spoofing their location to another country.
This is due to questions regarding the safety of the new laws, with worries about the integrity of their personal data called into question.
What are the UK's new online safety laws?
This new law is part of the Online Safety Act which aims to prevent minors from accessing content that may be harmful to them.
This includes sites that host adult content, including social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Reddit, and Bluesky.
All these sites are now required by law to block minors from accessing inappropriate content by introducing "robust" age verification techniques.
Under the Online Safety Act, companies that fail to introduce these measures may be fined 10 percent of their qualifying worldwide revenue or up to £18 million ($24 million), whichever is greater.
In extreme cases, if the courts allow, Ofcom will also be able to prevent sites from generating money or being accessed from the UK by requiring internet service providers, payment providers and advertisers stop working with them.
How will users' age be verified?
The age verification techniques used will very from site to site. However, they will need to be "technically accurate, robust, reliable and fair" in order to fit the requirements set out in the Online Safety Act.
For example, X has stated that it will use a selfie-based age verification system that uses its own AI model in order to verify users' ages.
On the other hand, Reddit (which introduced age verification to its UK site on the 14 July ahead of the law being introduced) has used external company Persona to verify users' ages either age estimation via selfie or birth date verification via a picture of their government ID.
Other verification techniques include providing your credit card details and having your age verified by a payment processor, or providing your email address and having it checked against other online services (e.g. banking providers) to estimate your age.
No matter which age verification techniques a site uses, it has still sparked concerns from users about their data being stored or saved without their permission, as well as the potential ramifications of a data breach or leak.
Other concerns also include the fact that users accessing certain types of content simply do not want the sites to know anything about them.
How people may evade the new age verification laws in the UK
The new age verification laws in the UK have had many searching for the best UK VPNs to avoid them due to concerns regarding their personal data and how it will be used to verify their age.
This is because VPNs can be used to get around location-specific content blocks by virtually relocation you to a different country.
A VPN does this by routing your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel between your device and a VPN server. This masks your IP address and your location as well as keeping your internet traffic safe from prying eyes.
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example:1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service).2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad.We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.
