SUMMARY
- United Kingdom lawmakers continue to debate banning virtual private networks (VPNs) as part of a measure to crack down on internet freedom following the enactment of the Online Safety Act
- VPNs have been used to circumvent proof-of-age and other identity requirements for online services as part of the Online Safety Act
- VPN usage has surged across the country as many have increasingly become concerned about internet freedom on the British Isles
- The House of Lords has urged Ofcom, the UK telecom regulator, to investigate how to detect VPN usage
A UK tech minister this week said there are “no current plans” to ban VPNs, but cautioned that “nothing is off the table when it comes to keeping children safe.”
Lord Clement-Jones, a member of the center-left Liberal Democrat party, claimed that the usage of VPNs by children was “widespread.” He warned that VPN usage renders “age-assurance measures ineffective.”
“The Government will continue to monitor the use of circumvention techniques, including VPNs, and any future interventions will be informed by the evidence,” Baroness Liz Lloyd of Effra, a government minister from the ruling left-wing Labour party said.
“The Government has made it clear that nothing is off the table when it comes to keeping children safe, and we will continue to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the Online Safety Act in robustly protecting children online,” Baroness Lloyd added.
The tech minister acknowledged recent criticism of the OSA, saying “there are also concerns that important content such as political debate, educational sites and information sites like Wikipedia, and support forums dealing with LGBTQ+ rights or sexual health are being inappropriately age-gated on social media.”
Even Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who devoted a large chunk of his time and resources over the past decade backing various “anti-disinformation” projects, said this week that the Online Safety Act was “very poorly thought-out legislation.”
As FFO has previously explained, the Online Safety Act is one of the most draconian pieces of tech censorship law in the western world, enabling the government to impose fines of up to 10 percent of world-wide revenue on non-compliant companies. In extreme cases, it also enables the government to take enforcement action against a tech platform’s partners, such as web hosting providers, payment processing services, and advertisers.
UK’s VPN Use Surges After Censorship Law
The United Kingdom has become one of the world’s fastest-growing VPN markets after the enactment of the Online Safety Act, making it one of only three European countries to be in the top 10 list of VPN usage.
Data revealed that over 10.7 million VPN apps have been downloaded in the first half of 2025, moving past the United States, France, and Germany.
ProtonVPN, which provides a no-log VPN service, said that just minutes after the Online Safety Act went into effect, VPN signups for its product surged by more than 1,400 percent.
Preston Byrne, a lawyer for the law firm Byrne & Storm, which represents 4chan in its legal fight with the Online Safety Act’s enforcers, said that VPN usage could very well reach 50 percent by the end of the year.
At the end of October, Baroness Keeley, the chair of the Communications and Digital Committee in the House of Lords, sent a letter to Dame Melanie Dawes, the CEO of Ofcom, the UK’s telecom regulator, and charged with carrying out the Online Safety Act, lamented that tech platforms are not “quaking in their boots” with regard to Online Safety Act enforcement.
The House of Lords chided the implementation of the Online Safety Act, stating that they could have gone further and moved faster.
Andy Burrows, the CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation, as well as Baroness Beeban Kidron, during a September 2025, hearing with the Communications and Digital Committee, said that the implementation of the Online Safety Act took a “gradualist approach.”
During the same hearing, Kirdron referred to the implementation as “incredibly slow.”
“If we keep on getting tiny increments of change but leaving the big gap in outcome, thus letting everybody off the hook, the incentive of safe harbor is not to do the best but to do exactly what you are told. That is a big problem for the Act,” she said.
Kidron also said that the Online Safety Act has faced a “bashing over the past couple of months,” some of its criticism is “misinformation.”
Burrows agreed with Kidron, saying that there was always going to be “a sea of controversy and misinformation” as the Act would be implemented. He called for “public proactive enforcement” to reset the narrative about the Online Safety Act.
The letter noted that, in September, the House of Lords took note from academics and civil society organizations about Ofcom’s additional safety measures consultation, which closed on October 20. They said that the proposed measures did not go far enough.
