Dame Rachel told BBC Newsnight: “Of course, we need age verification on VPNs - it’s absolutely a loophole that needs closing and that’s one of my major recommendations.”
She wants ministers to explore requiring VPNs “to implement highly effective age assurances to stop underage users from accessing pornography.”
That’s always the problem with escalation wars on this sort of thing.
Incidentally, I saw reports today about the fallout of the regulation in EU press. One highlighted as a success of the measure that traffic to the top porn sites from the UK had dropped by about half (which shouldn’t have been the case if only underage users were blocked anyway). It proceeded to flag all the EU countries prepping similar regulation.
In their defense they also reported further down the article that VPN usage had skyrocketed and traffic to smaller, less safe sites that had just ignored the regulation had gone up a lot as well. I’m sure that’s unrelated, though.
That’s not how… That doesn’t…
Oh you know what? They’ll find out.
I have my doubts. Most people barely grasp the surface of what technology can do, let alone understand how it does it.
They also don’t understand that whatever they come up with, technology has a way around it.
That’s always the problem with escalation wars on this sort of thing.
Incidentally, I saw reports today about the fallout of the regulation in EU press. One highlighted as a success of the measure that traffic to the top porn sites from the UK had dropped by about half (which shouldn’t have been the case if only underage users were blocked anyway). It proceeded to flag all the EU countries prepping similar regulation.
In their defense they also reported further down the article that VPN usage had skyrocketed and traffic to smaller, less safe sites that had just ignored the regulation had gone up a lot as well. I’m sure that’s unrelated, though.