Canny kids are borrowing adult faces to get around the age checks now required to access popular websites in the U.K., but there’s an easier (if more expensive) method: just use a virtual private network to access the web from another country. A tried and tested method for use in other countries with heavy internet censorship, that football’s coming home. The Financial Times reports an explosion in use of VPNs there in the last week. [archive]
But to evade the new rules, a growing number of people in the UK are turning to tools more often used by citizens in authoritarian regimes to get around internet censorship. Apps offering virtual private networks — which route a smartphone or PC’s internet traffic to another country, bypassing local network providers — made up half of the top 10 most popular free apps on the UK’s App Store for iOS this weekend, according to Apple’s rankings. Proton VPN leapfrogged ChatGPT to become the top free app in the UK, according to Apple’s daily App Store charts, with similar services from developers Super Unlimited and Nord Security also rising over the weekend. Proton, the Swiss-based company behind the top VPN app, said it had experienced a more than 1,800 per cent increase in daily sign-ups from UK-based users after new age verification rules took effect on Friday. Nord said there had been a 1,000 per cent increase in UK purchases of VPN subscriptions since before the rules took effect.
An amazing quote from Proton: “We would normally associate these large spikes in sign-ups with major civil unrest.”
The so-called “Online Safety Act” does prohibit VPN companies from disclosing that their services can be used to circumvent censorship, but did not otherwise regulate their use. The omnishambles at hand–nothing successfully blocked and everyday Britons learning en masse how to browse more privately–has already got local media vaguely suggesting a VPN ban is now on the table.
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