The government’s flagship Online Safety Act is already being bypassed at scale, with a new survey showing nearly one in three Brits are still accessing adult content without age checks in place.
Research by verification and anti-fraud platform Sumsub, which polled 2,000 UK consumers, found widespread scepticism about whether Ofcom and ministers can enforce the regime.
Over half of those who doubt the act’s effectiveness say the checks are simply too easy to dodge, often with the use of VPNs.
VPNs and censorship fears
The act, which came into force in July, requires sites hosting pornography or harmful content to deploy ‘robust’ verification – from ID uploads to AI-driven facial scans.
Yet VPN apps have rocketed to the top of Apple’s UK download charts since the rules began, with one firm reporting an 1,800 per cent surge in sign-ups as users seek to mask their location and sidestep restrictions.
What’s more, “Many of these free VPNs are riddled with issues”, argued Daniel Card, a cyber-security expert with BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT.
“Some act as traffic brokers for data harvesting firms, others are so poorly built they expose users to attacks.”
Despite this, most people back the principle. Some 64 per cent agree age verification is needed to protect children, climbing to 78 per cent among parents with under-18s.
But nearly half, or 48 per cent, worry the rules risk tipping into censorship, with more than a third saying they’ve seen non-adult “safe for work” material wrongly restricted, even as explicit content slips through.
Distrust in the tools themselves also lingers. A quarter of respondents said they don’t trust AI-based facial scans to judge age, with suspicion highest among over-55s.
Meanwhile, the rise of deepfakes poses a new challenge, too.
Sumsub reported a 900 per cent surge in manipulated videos and a 275 per cent increase in forged synthetic documents in the past year alone, raising fears that bad actors can trick the system more easily than ever.
Campaigners warn the act’s vague definitions of “harmful” content, coupled with the threat of fines of up to 10 per cent of global turnover, have prompted tech firms to over-comply.
Users have reported being blocked from Spotify playlists, GIFs and even parliamentary speeches – fuelling claims of “monstrous censorship” as the act has turned into a “political punchbag”, as one senior government official told the Financial Times.
While ministers insist the Online Safety Act will make Britain the safest place in the world to be online, the early data tells a different story.
The act currently stands as a law that is popular in theory but, in practice, easily evaded and riddled with unintended consequences.