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“Politicians have now found that persons are utilizing VPNs to guard their privateness and bypass these invasive legal guidelines. Their resolution? Totally ban the usage of VPNs.”
The present Danish authorities is clearly no pal of on-line privateness or anonymity. Throughout its rotating six-month presidency of the EU council, which is, fortunately, coming to an finish, it tried to push via the European Fee’s proposed Regulation to Forestall and Fight Baby Sexual Abuse — aka, the “Chat Management Regulation” — regardless of widespread opposition.
As we famous on the time, the ostensible aim of the proposed laws — curbing the unfold of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM) on-line — is commendable. Nonetheless, the best way the EU was going about it not solely threatened basic rights and protections for everybody; it risked reworking the Web into an much more centrally managed, surveilled setting.
In its authentic type, the proposed regulation successfully mandated the scanning of personal communications, together with these presently protected by end-to-end encryption. If enacted, messaging platforms, together with WhatsApp, Sign and Telegram, must scan each message, photograph and video despatched by customers, even when encrypted.
The proposal was opposed by sufficient member states, together with Germany, largely resulting from grassroots stress, to forestall it from passing the EU Council. So, the Danish authorities went again to the drafting board. The compromise invoice it got here up with mandates a voluntary seek for delicate materials in non-public chats, as an alternative of basic monitoring, and was duly authorised.
Whereas a marked enchancment on the unique, the brand new proposal nonetheless raises severe issues. Former MEP Patrick Beyer, one of many key defenders of privateness in Europe, warns that three main issues nonetheless stay unsolved. From Euronews:
[T]he proposal nonetheless doesn’t comply with the European Parliament’s place that solely courts can determine to entry communication channels; it nonetheless bans kids from downloading messaging apps; and, lastly, nameless communication is successfully outlawed.
[T]he present Danish proposal doesn’t comply with the European Parliament’s (EP) place to permit scanning of communications solely by court docket order.
The EP’s proposal is a basic safeguard for Europeans’ privateness of communications and units an ordinary that can’t later be modified by further stress from EU establishments, such because the well-known “Voluntary Codes of Follow/Conduct” we’ve seen for general-purpose AI and disinformation.
“Voluntary” in Europe usually isn’t: opting out of a “voluntary code” can imply stricter remedy, nudging tech companies towards de facto necessary scanning with out explicitly regulating it…
[T]he Danish proposal’s Article 4(3) would successfully ban nameless e-mail and messenger accounts, in addition to nameless chatting:
“They would wish to current an ID or their face, making them identifiable and risking knowledge leaks”.
This alone ought to alarm journalists and civil society organisations that depend on non-public communication with whistleblowers.
Seemingly not glad with reaching a consensus on EU-wide management of messaging apps, the Danish authorities not too long ago got here up with a legislative proposal that sought to ban the home use of VPNs — to entry geo-restricted streaming content material and bypass web site blocks.
The proposal shaped a part of a broader legislative effort to fight on-line piracy that has alarmed digital rights advocates, reported Tech Radar:
Jesper Lund, chairman of the IT Political Affiliation, expressed deep concern over the invoice’s ambiguous language, stating it has a “totalitarian really feel to it.”
Lund argued that the present wording may very well be interpreted so broadly that it will not solely criminalize streaming but additionally hinder the sale and legit use of VPN companies throughout Denmark.
“Even in Russia, it isn’t punishable to bypass unlawful web sites with a VPN,” Lund instructed Danish broadcaster DR, stating that the proposed Danish regulation may go additional than measures seen in additional authoritarian states.
The excellent news is that the proposed measure drew a lot flak from digital rights advocates and most people that the federal government withdrew it — or at the least briefly shelved it — final week. Once more, from Tech Radar:
The Danish Minister for Tradition, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, introduced on Monday that he was reducing the contentious part from the invoice. “I don’t help making VPNs unlawful, and I’ve by no means proposed to take action,” Engel-Schmidt stated in a assertion. He admitted the preliminary textual content was “not formulated exactly sufficient” and led to a basic misunderstanding of its objective.
The unique proposal, a part of a wider anti-piracy effort, sought to make it unlawful to “use VPN connections to entry media content material which might in any other case not be obtainable in Denmark, or to bypass blocks on unlawful web sites.” This sparked alarm amongst privateness teams, who warned that the obscure wording may criminalize not solely streaming fanatics but additionally abnormal residents utilizing the finest VPN companies for official privateness and safety causes…
Jesper Lund of the IT Political Affiliation described the proposal as having a “totalitarian really feel to it” and warned it may go additional than measures seen in additional authoritarian nations.
Denmark is in no way the one Western “liberal democracy” to have turned its sights on VPNs in latest months. Since VPNs basically operate as anonymity masks that permit customers to cover their on-line exercise and entry restricted content material, their recognition has grown as governments have sought to impose more and more draconian restrictions on Web use.
As readers might recall, when the UK’s Starmer authorities made age verification checks necessary for accessing pornography and different supposedly grownup content material on-line in July, it sparked an explosion in VPN use. As we had beforehand warned, these on-line age verification checks, that are actually proliferating throughout the collective West’s ostensibly liberal democracies, threaten to entice everybody, not simply minors, of their internet.
The Starmer authorities’s predictable response has been to buckle down by together with amendments to its Orwellian-titled Youngsters’s Wellbeing and Faculties Invoice that search to ban kids from utilizing VPNs, amongst different issues.
The UK Parliament simply debated a petition with 550,000 signatures calling to repeal the On-line Security Act. It may have been a second to defend free speech. As an alternative, MPs used it to demand much more management over the web.
They stated it’s “not about controlling speech,” whereas… https://t.co/AUNNWRs3on
— Reclaim The Internet (@ReclaimTheNetHQ) December 18, 2025
As with the age verification checks for pornography web sites, the brand new checks, if carried out, will entice each adults and youngsters of their internet.
It will be dangerous sufficient if this have been simply one other bout of insanity on the a part of Europe’s political class, however the identical factor is occurring all through the so-called “Collective West”. Australia simply launched its long-awaited age verification laws, which blocks under-16s from becoming a member of social media platforms, thereby all adults to submit ID to entry platforms.
As we warned in November 2024, on-line age verification seems to be the Trojan Horse for the mass rollout and enforced adoption of digital IDs. Different Western jurisdictions, together with the UK, the EU, and the US, are actually treating the Australian guidelines as a blueprint for their very own laws, experiences Reclaim the Internet.
In the US, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama stated she hopes “Australia taking this step…leads the US to really doing one thing.”
Britt, a mom of two, is without doubt one of the sponsors of the bipartisan Youngsters Off Social Media Act, which might forestall kids below 13 from utilizing social platforms.
Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, instructed The Sydney Morning Herald that he helps comparable limits. “I prefer it. I’ve supported age limits right here within the US for teenagers on social media,” he stated.
“I say this as a mother or father…Dad and mom need assistance, they usually really feel like they’re swimming upstream when all people else has social media.”
Hawley, writer of The Tyranny of Huge Tech, stated he has spoken with Australian stakeholders concerning the ban, although he didn’t establish them.
The Starmer authorities’s proposed modification to the additionally requires requiring social media to make use of “highly-effective” age assurance measures to forestall kids below 16 from utilizing such companies.
The issue is that almost all age assurance measures are something however efficient. Whereas governments within the West are lauding the advantages of Australia’s age verification system and its social media ban for under-16s, the fact on the bottom is that Australian youngsters, like their counterparts within the UK, are discovering embarrassingly straightforward workarounds, together with utilizing VPNs and different individuals’s faces, because the report beneath explains.
Appears to be like like Australia’s social media ban for below 16s is a colossal failure and the laughing inventory of the world. Younger persons are good and have straightforward workarounds for the “ban”. They’re overtly mocking Anthony Albanese and one even says straight up, “I do know who I am not voting for… pic.twitter.com/wyxxeeRUIo
— Francynancy (@FranMooMoo) December 18, 2025
After the UK carried out its comparable On-line Security Act to forestall youth from accessing on-line grownup content material in July, the nation’s VPN utilization surged 6,430% as teenagers sough to skirt age checks on social media platforms and pornography web sites. Maybe with time, the restrictions will turn out to be more practical.
In response to Info Age, tech firms, together with SNAP, Meta and Reddit, are assured of having the ability to adjust to the brand new age restrictions — failure to take action may end in eight-figure fines:
Talking with Info Age, a spokesperson for social media firm Snap confirmed utilizing a VPN gained’t change current customers’ “means to entry Snapchat”.
“Snapchat determines eligibility based mostly on the place your account has been energetic over the previous month, not simply your present community connection,” they stated.
“In case your account is locked since you’re below 16 in Australia, it’s going to keep locked till you flip 16 and full age verification.”
Social media big Meta – which owns Fb, Instagram and Threads – additionally confirmed it’s ready to stick to the ban regardless of VPN utilization.
“Whereas VPNs permit customers to vary their IP tackle, we additionally contemplate alerts past simply IP when figuring out a person’s location,” a spokesperson stated.
Reddit didn’t clarify exactly the way it plans to dam underage VPN customers, however a spokesperson confirmed it’s “taking steps to adjust to Australia’s Social Media Minimal Age Regulation, together with suspending accounts of customers confirmed to be below 16 and requiring new customers to be at the least 16 to create accounts”.
As different governments need to impose their very own on-line age verification guidelines, they’re additionally methods to shut off entry to crucial workaround: VPNs. A number of months in the past, Forbes reported that some US states are debating the deserves of imposing VPN bans or restrictions. The US’ cyber protection company, CISA, has even printed a warning for Android and iPhone customers: “Don’t use a private VPN”:
This reissued recommendation first surfaced a 12 months in the past, now it’s going to resonate given the VPN surge seen since.
Digital Personal Networks work by tunnelling knowledge to and from a tool by way of third-party servers. This masks location and particular exercise (websites and platform visited) from the networks and ISPs carrying the site visitors. Good VPNs additionally present a layer of safety when connecting by way of public Wi-Fi networks, albeit they’re not strictly needed.
CISA warns that “private VPNs merely shift residual dangers from the web service supplier (ISP) to the VPN supplier, usually rising the assault floor. Many free and business VPN suppliers have questionable safety and privateness insurance policies.”
As a blanket warning its not unhelpful. An unsafe VPN from an unsafe developer is far worse than no VPN in any respect. And whereas hiding your location to bypass a porn ban is easy, most if not all of the content material to/out of your gadget is encrypted anyway.
What the Forbes article doesn’t point out is the extent to which Israeli tech firms have come to dominate the VPN market. As Alan Mcleod experiences for Mint Press, “a substantial chunk of the market — together with three of the six hottest VPNs — is quietly operated by an Israeli-owned firm with shut connections to that nation’s nationwide safety state, together with the elite Unit 8200 and Duvdevan Items of the Israeli Protection Forces (IDF).”
This is similar Israel whose firms and intelligence companies have created most of the world’s most superior on-line surveillance applications and hacking instruments, together with Cellebrite and Pegasus. The truth that it additionally controls most of the world’s VPNs, with which it may “create backdoors for Israeli intelligence to hold out an enormous kompromat operation on customers across the globe” is an apparent trigger for concern, warns Mcleod.
In different phrases, one must be selective when selecting a VPN service, particularly now that governments have them squarely of their sights — on the similar time that they’re intensifying their censorship efforts.
“Politicians have now found that persons are utilizing VPNs to guard their privateness and bypass these invasive legal guidelines,” EFF warns. “Their resolution? Totally ban the usage of VPNs… And that battle is being fought by individuals who clearly do not know how any of this expertise truly works.”
NC reader Baron Aroxdale raised an identical level within the feedback part of a earlier submit, noting that VPN bans are unlikely to work — at the least not with out inflicting severe injury to the web alongside the best way:
VPNs are a really normal a part of enterprise IT. They’re merely a way to attach distant computer systems collectively on the identical digital community. Help for them is often inbuilt into working programs, and {hardware} community firms will usually present desktop functions to help VPN setup on their routers.
VPNs are about as widespread as web proxies or e-mail. You may’t simply “ban” them with out breaking the spine of recent IT programs for the reason that late Nineteen Nineties.
That didn’t forestall the Danish authorities from attempting. Nonetheless, it was pressured right into a retreat by the ferocity of the general public backlash. This may occasionally maintain an vital lesson for us all within the so-called “liberal” West: if we’re to have any probability of preserving any diploma of privateness and anonymity on-line, we’re going to should battle tooth and nail for it.
Over a decade in the past, fashionable grassroots actions within the US have been capable of halt the passage of the SOPA and PIPA payments that threatened free speech, web safety and on-line innovation. Equally, one of many principal the reason why the EU couldn’t push via the Chat Management laws in its authentic type was a one-man grassroots on-line marketing campaign that introduced stress to bear on Europe’s elected representatives.
In each circumstances, the unparalleled community results of the web have been used as a strong weapon towards authorities’s repressive designs for the web. The issue at present, nevertheless, is that governments continue to learn from these failures and adopting their technique. They’re additionally extra decided than ever to deliver the web below their management, even when it means doing so in a salami slicing approach — one thing the EU is especially adept at.
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