{“lastseen”:”2025-12-31T12:05:10″,”description”:”If 2024 was the year lawmakers talked about online age verification, 2025 was the year they actually flipped the switch.\u200b\\n\\nIn 2025, across parts of Europe and the US, age checks for certain websites (especially pornography) turned long\u2011running child\u2011protection debates into real\u2011world access controls. Overnight, users found entire categories of sites locked behind ID checks, platforms geo\u2011blocking whole countries, and VPN traffic surging as people tried to get around the new walls.\u200b\\n\\nFrom France\u2019s hardline stance on adult sites to the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act, to a patchwork of new rules across multiple US states, these \u201cshow me your ID before you browse\u201d systems are reshaping the web. The stated goal is to \u201cprotect the children,\u201d but in practice the outcome is frequently a blunt national block, followed by users voting with their VPN buttons.\u200b\\n\\n## The core tension: safety vs privacy\\n\\nThe fundamental challenge for websites and services is not checking age in principle, but how to do it without turning everyday browsing into an identity check. Almost every viable method asks users to hand over sensitive data, raising the stakes if (or more likely when) that data leaks in a breach.\u200b\\n\\nFor ordinary users, the result is a confusing mess of blocks, prompts, and workarounds. On paper, countries want better protection for minors. In practice, adults discover that entire platforms are unavailable unless they are prepared to disclose personal information or disguise where they connect from. No website wants to be the one blamed after an age\u2011verification database is compromised, yet regulators continue to push for stronger identity links.\u200b\\n\\n## How age checks actually work\\n\\nRegulators such as Ofcom publish lists of acceptable age\u2011verification methods, each with its own privacy and usability trade\u2011offs. None are perfect, and many shift risk from governments and platforms onto users\u2019 most sensitive personal data.\u200b\\n\\n * **Facial age estimation** : Users upload a selfie or short video so an algorithm can guess whether they look over 18, which avoids storing documents but relies on sensitive biometrics and imperfect accuracy.\u200b\\n * **Open banking:** An age\u2011check service queries your bank for a simple \u201cadult or not\u201d answer. It may be convenient on paper but it’s a hard sell when the relying site is an adult platform.\u200b\\n * **Digital identity services:** Digital ID wallets can assert \u201cover 18\u201d without exposing full credentials, but they add yet another app and infrastructure layer that must be trusted and widely adopted.\u200b\\n * **Credit card checks:** Using a valid payment card as a proxy for adulthood is simple and familiar, but it excludes adults without cards and does not cover lower age thresholds like \u201cover 13.\u201d\u200b\\n * **Email\u2011based estimation:** Systems infer age from where an email address has been used (such as banks or utilities), effectively encouraging cross\u2011service profiling and \u201cdigital snooping.\u201d\u200b\\n * **Mobile network checks:** Providers indicate whether an account has age\u2011related restrictions. This can be fast, but is unreliable for pay\u2011as\u2011you\u2011go accounts, burner SIMs, or poorly maintained records.\u200b\\n * **Photo\u2011ID matching:** Users upload an ID document plus a selfie so systems can match faces and ages. This is effective, but concentrates highly sensitive identity data in yet another attractive target for attackers.\u200b\\n\\n\\n\\nMy personal preference would be **double\u2011blind verification** : a third\u2011party provider verifies your age, then issues a simple token like \u201c18+\u201d to sites without revealing your identity or learning which site you visit, offering stronger privacy than most current approaches.\u200b\\n\\nIn almost every case, users must surrender personal information or documents to prove their age, increasing the risk that identity data ends up in the wrong hands. This turns age gates into long\u2011lived security liabilities rather than temporary access checks.\u200b\\n\\n## Geoblocking, VPNs, and cross\u2011border frictions\\n\\nRight now, most platforms comply by detecting user location via IP address and then either demanding age checks or denying access entirely to users in specific regions. France\u2019s enforcement actions, for example, led several major adult sites to geo-block the entire country in 2025, while the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act coincided with a sharp rise in VPN use rather than widespread cross-border blocking.\\n\\nEuropean regulators generally focus on domestic ISPs, Digital Services Act reporting, and large platform fines rather than on filtering traffic from other countries, partly because broad traffic blocking raises net\u2011neutrality and technical complexity concerns. In the US, some state proposals have explicitly targeted VPN circumventions, signalling a willingness to attack the workarounds rather than the underlying incentives.\u200b\\n\\nMeanwhile, network\u2011level filtering vendors advertise \u201ccross\u2011border\u201d controls and VPN detection for governments, hinting at future scenarios where unregulated inbound flows or anonymity tools are aggressively throttled. If enforcement pressure grows, these capabilities could evolve from niche offerings into standard state infrastructure.\u200b\\n\\n## A future of less anonymity?\\n\\nA common argument is that eroding online anonymity will also curb toxic behavior and abuse on social media, since people act differently when their real\u2011world identity is at stake. But tying everyday browsing to identity checks risks chilling legitimate speech and exploration long before it delivers any proven civility benefits.\u200b\\n\\nA world where every connection requires ID is unlikely to arrive overnight. Still, the direction of travel is clear: more countries are normalizing age gates that double as identity checks, and more users are learning to route around them. Unless privacy\u2011preserving systems like robust double\u2011blind verification become the norm, age\u2011verification policies intended to protect children may end up undermining both privacy and open access to information.\u200b\\n\\n* * *\\n\\n**We don ‘t just report on privacy\u2014we offer you the option to use it.**\\n\\nPrivacy risks should never spread beyond a headline. Keep your online privacy yours by using Malwarebytes Privacy VPN.”,”published”:”2025-12-31T10:49:04″,”modified”:”2025-12-31T10:49:04″,”type”:”malwarebytes”,”title”:”In 2025, age checks started locking people out of the internet”,”source”:””,”references”:””,”id”:”MALWAREBYTES:ABF476115266DE8F6FA9BB202258D830″,”bulletinFamily”:”blog”,”cwe”:null,”cvelist”:[],”sourceData”:””,”sourceHref”:””,”cvss”:{“score”:0,”severity”:”NONE”,”vector”:”NONE”,”version”:”NONE”},”cvss2″:{},”cvss3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””,”cvssV3″:{“version”:””,”vectorString”:””,”baseScore”:0,”baseSeverity”:””,”attackVector”:””,”attackComplexity”:””,”privilegesRequired”:””,”userInteraction”:””,”scope”:””,”confidentialityImpact”:””,”integrityImpact”:””,”availabilityImpact”:””}},”href”:”https:\/\/www.malwarebytes.com\/blog\/news\/2025\/12\/in-2025-age-checks-started-locking-people-out-of-the-internet”,”category_name”:”News”,”post_link”:””,”product”:””,”version”:””,”vendor”:””,”ai_description”:””,”ai_severity”:””,”ai_vendor”:””,”ai_product”:””,”ai_version”:””,”ai_score”:0}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{“lastseen”:”2025-12-31T12:05:10″,”description”:”If 2024 was the year lawmakers talked about online age verification, 2025 was the year they actually flipped the switch.\u200b\\n\\nIn 2025, across parts of Europe…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[6,8,12,115,13,33,7,11,5],"class_list":["post-33452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-category_news","tag-cve","tag-cvss","tag-exploit","tag-malwarebytes","tag-news","tag-none","tag-security","tag-tapic","tag-vulnerability"],"yoast_head":"\n