The British government has suggested it may ban VPN services as it seeks to enforce its upcoming social media ban for children under 16.
The censorious left-wing UK government said that it will announce plans for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) next month amid growing questions about how it intends to ensure that children do not subvert the upcoming social media prohibition.
Critics have warned that the social media ban for under-16s will require the state to implement a digital ID system to verify internet users’ ages, potentially impacting the privacy of all citizens, including law-abiding adults.
Others have also questioned what the government intends to do about children who simply use VPNs to mask their IP addresses and access the internet from countries that don’t prohibit children from using social media sites.
While VPNs were once mostly used by people in authoritarian countries like Communist China, Islamist Iran, or Vladimir Putin’s Russia to unblock vast swathes of the internet, they have grown in popularity in Western countries in recent years amid rising state censorship.
Indeed, according to data collected by the IT Asset Management Group, Google searches for “VPN” rose by 165 per cent after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer formally announced plans to ban social media for those under 16 on Monday, City AM reported.
Technology Minister Liz Kendall told the BBC on Tuesday morning that the government will “make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions.”
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