Online age verification for adult content in the UK was implemented on July 25, 2025 to the chagrin of online safety advocates and myriad netizens. It requires any web service or social media site hosting content that could be deemed inappropriate to children to set up a system to prove users are over 18. This is all thanks to The Online Safety Act.
What is The Online Safety Act?
The Online Safety Act, passed in the UK Parliament on 26 October 2023, aims to prevent children from being exposed to harmful material online. If companies don’t add age verification to such content, they could face heavy fines, criminal action, or be banned from the UK entirely.
Overblocking and censorship
One key problem that has arisen is knowing how to define such content. While pornography is obvious, other material of concern that the act flags includes anything that promotes self-harm, eating disorders, suicide, abusive and hateful behaviour, or dangerous stunts.
Some sites have begun blocking content that wouldn’t seem immediately harmful to children to avoid penalization. In fact, some subreddits blocked so far provide valuable resources for both minors and adults.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, it includes subreddits related to LGBTQ+ identities, journalism, periods, and sexual assault. Some strange communities that also ended up being walled off include r/worldwar2, r/earwax, and r/rickroll. Even Wikipedia isn’t safe from age verification, even though it’s an educational resource. According to CNBC, a high court judge ruled that it must adhere to age verification requirements for certain pages.
Safety and privacy concerns
Beyond the fact that minors are being locked out of online resources they might need, the actual verification process infringes on people’s privacy and puts them at risk of cybercrime. The most common options for age verification are uploading an image of a government ID, sharing credit card information, or submitting a face scan that estimates the user’s age.
This obviously puts a dent in online anonymity. Depending on your method of age verification, providing this proof across various sites may make it easier to track a person’s online activities, particularly their preferences in “harmful content”. Furthermore, the need to share IDs and credit card information so readily puts people at risk of identity theft and financial crimes.
Workarounds
For now, people are able to make do with the new rules without handing over sensitive data. For instance, The Verge reports that Proton VPN saw an 1,800 percent increase in UK-based user signups in the days following the age verification rollout. David Peterson, Proton’s general manager, told the publication:
“This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact universal age verification laws will have on their privacy,” said Peterson. “The sign-up spike in the UK follows a similar pattern as when other governments put in place restrictions on communication or social media platforms.”
Cora is a digital copywriter for SSLs.com. Having eight years of experience in online content creation, she is a versatile writer with an interest in a wide variety of topics, ranging from technology to marketing.