The Government is already getting so much pushback on next year’s blanket ban of U16s having access to, well, almost anything on the planet that the Department of Wishful Thinking & Magic Wand Waving is now seeking to ban VPNs. Let’s not tell them GCHQ, MI5, the Cabinet Office, MoD, DwP, DfE and almost every educational Trust in the country (to name but just a few users) all use VPNs. Let’s just sit back and watch how this plays out.
It’s a dangerous move, as U16s desperate to use their beloved social media accounts will just seek out VPNs that don’t carry any form of age restriction… which opens the doors to lots of dodgy/scammy VPNs flooding the internets. ID theft will be an open market.
Just as in Australia, U16s who want access to something will use VPNs. If VPNs become age-restricted, the U16s will just get ‘a friend’ to do the age verification thing. But what would it cost them? Is it placing them in a risky place? And even if the ‘friend’ doesn’t require anything, they have made a hole through the Government’s legislation because, as sure as eggs are egg-shaped, the entire U16 population will figure out how to bypass the regs.
The other – scarier – thing about requiring age-verification either for direct access to the Internet *or for access to VPNs* is 3rd-party age verification providers are:
* unregulated
* foreign-owned/foreign located (usually in the middle east or far east)
* not prone to UK or EU security standards
* not required to be GDPR compliant
There have already been data leaks from a couple of age-verification providers. As I said in the Well gosh post: “making a law is no guarantee that law will actually work”, and ” If you try to solve a problem by passing a law, but people don’t obey that law, you now have 2 problems where you used to have 1.”
Don’t worry too much about it, as I’m sure our new PM – whomever he/she maybe – will sort it all out.
Sigh…