{"id":147705,"date":"2025-08-26T01:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T05:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/?p=147705"},"modified":"2025-08-26T01:12:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T05:12:02","slug":"could-the-uk-ban-vpns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/could-the-uk-ban-vpns\/","title":{"rendered":"Could The UK Ban VPNs?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"daves-2072172467\" class=\"daves-single-post-before-content daves-entity-placement\" style=\"margin-bottom: 25px;\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-7205184075006101\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-7205184075006101\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"2700504761\" \ndata-ad-format=\"auto\" data-full-width-responsive=\"false\"><\/ins>\n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div><p>As I&#8217;ve mentioned already in other articles, the UK Online Safety Act (OSA) now requires UK visitors to certain websites, such as Reddit, Spotify, and Wikipedia, to verify their age with a selfie or other means of ID. It&#8217;s worth noting here that national ID cards are not mandatory in the UK, so many people use their passport or driving license for such purposes. However, since most UK citizens view age verification as both intrusive and an invasion of privacy, many have turned to VPNs to hide their actual location. This has led to a massive surge in VPN sales as well as whispers of a possible VPN ban in the UK. The free VPN, Proton, has seen a huge demand for downloads, for example.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, many UK members of parliament use VPNs and put the subscription costs on their expenses, which the taxpayer ultimately pays.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__container\">\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__content article__content\">\n<p>\u201cFor everybody who\u2019s out there thinking of using VPNs, let me just say to you directly: verifying your age keeps a child safe, keeps children safe in our country. So, let\u2019s just not try and find a way around,\u201d he (Peter Kyle) told the BBC.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__container\">\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__content article__content\">\n<p>Banning VPNs is \u201cnot on the cards,&#8221; he added. &#8220;I just want to urge caution in how people are using them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__container\">\n<div class=\"sidebar-grid__content article__content\">\n<p>He, Peter Kyle, is the UK Secretary of State for Tech, yet doesn&#8217;t seem to know much about tech in the first place. He also tweeted (X&#8217;ed?) this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m a great believer that ministers and many others shouldn&#8217;t be let loose on social media. On the other hand, give them some rope&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2>The UK Would Join The Club Of Pariah States<\/h2>\n<p>While no one seriously believes the British government would ban the use of VPNs, many countries, including Russia, the UAE, Iran, and others, ban the use of VPNs, but as we all know, there are ways around such bans. According to experts in this field, the only way to do it is badly. Detecting VPNs is not so simple because many VPN companies can make their traffic look like regular HTTPS anyway, so the infrastructure required would be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Would ISPs snitch on their customers&#8217; use of VPNs? That would be a very slippery slope indeed.<\/p>\n<p>As I have mentioned in related articles, the protection of minors online is a serious matter, but how governments go about putting that legislation in place requires serious thought.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"daves-1679058378\" class=\"daves-after-content daves-entity-placement\"><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-7205184075006101\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display:block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-7205184075006101\" \ndata-ad-slot=\"3225321574\" \ndata-ad-format=\"autorelaxed\" data-full-width-responsive=\"false\"><\/ins>\n<script> \n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); \n<\/script>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I&#8217;ve mentioned already in other articles, the UK Online Safety Act (OSA) now requires UK visitors to certain websites, such as Reddit, Spotify, and Wikipedia, to verify their age with a selfie or other means of ID. It&#8217;s worth noting here that national ID [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1640,"featured_media":147755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[264,28],"tags":[14487,5064],"class_list":["post-147705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-browser","category-internet","tag-vpn-ban-uk","tag-vpn-blocking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1640"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davescomputertips.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}