VPN Usage Soars Following Missouri Age Verification Law

History has, once again, repeated itself. After Missouri passed age verification laws, VPN usage and searches were sent soaring.

At this point, it feels like a tale as old as time itself (it’s not, but it sure feels like it these days). Technologically illiterate politicians demand that websites and/or platforms implement broken age verification systems or face stiff fines. They argue that putting into the law that they technology must be “highly effective” as if that is going to magically make the technology all better. People who understand technology explain that the technology they ask for doesn’t exist and that it would cause privacy problems over top of the fact that it is easily circumvented.

In response, the technologically illiterate politicians accuse the knowledgeable people of being “perverts” or somehow conspiring to harm children. The knowledgeable people point out that people can circumvent such measures through things like VPNs. The politicians don’t believe them and accuse the knowledgeable people of spreading disinformation and pass the terrible law. Then, the law gets implemented, faulty age gates go up, people’s personal information gets leaked or hacked, and people trivially circumvent it with VPN technology. The politicians respond with the shocked Pikachu reaction.

The punchline – if there is such a thing in this sorry story – is that when this happens in other countries, for countries thinking about implementing these laws, those technologically illiterate politicians dismiss reality as little more than “disinformation” and ignore the consequences of implementing such terrible laws. Think of it as a wilful ignorance approach to the situation. This while firmly believing that things will be different when they try it – mainly because it’s a law that they wrote and their ego overrides all common sense in this situation. They go on to push for these laws and, well, you know the rest. As a result, we ensure that this cycle of ignorance continues to repeat over and over and over again.

None of this is just hypothetical theory, either. We’ve seen very situation – specifically with respect to VPNs – play out in the UK, Texas, Wisconsin, and Australia to name a few examples. Every single time politicians react with a mix of shock, horror, and frustration. Some of the technologically ignorant go so far as to push to ban VPNs. Others push for the idea of extending age verification directly onto VPNs.

Now, obviously, it goes without saying that both methods are doomed to fail. Slapping age verification onto VPN services is only going to serve to be a broken unworkable mess. Banning VPNs altogether is a fools errand. After all, part of the point of VPN technology is to change your location which means that you are literally trying to ban technology explicitly designed to evade geographical bans. To put it simply: good luck with that.

Despite all of this repeated history playing out, other countries are simply moving full steam ahead with this idiocy. This includes the UK (an expansion of existing age verification in that example), France, and Ireland to name three examples (there are others). This because multiple countries are already on a one way trip to stupid on this front.

While all of this is going on, it comes as no surprise that there is another incident of history repeating itself, yet again. Missouri is one US state that implemented age verification laws on porn sites. As a result, people in that state are seeing age gates crop up. To the surprise of exactly no one paying attention, VPN searches are now soaring. From SlashGear:

Towards the end of November, the state of Missouri passed a law that mandated all adult websites to enforce an identity check system. The objective is to ensure that users below the legal age threshold can’t access sexually explicit and harmful material. Websites that don’t comply with the state regulation will face punitive action. Soon after the law was enforced, there was a rapid spike in the search for VPN solutions, so that users can skirt around the geofencing if a website asks them to verify their identity.

Based on Google Trends data localized to the state, TechRadar reported that there was a roughly four times increase in the number of VPN-related search terms, citing a 30-day log of search data. A day after the law was enforced, there was a sharp two-fold increase in the volume of search queries involving VPNs. The trend is not unheard of, and it’s not just limited to explicit content. Multiple countries in the not too distant past, have banned popular platforms and communication sites. As a result, users often turn to VPNs to access them, which is the case with the netizens of Missouri.

The sudden surge in searches for VPN is pretty obvious; the whole idea of submitting your personal information with a state-issued ID card to sites that contain what the state of Missouri defines as “material harmful to minors” is the real risk. These websites are notorious for intrusive ads and redirects that land users on extremely risky websites. Privacy advocates have fought against such online age verification protocols for years, citing obvious cybersecurity risks.

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, about this should be a surprise. This is just the latest example of this behaviour happening. When governments implement internet censorship and surveillance laws, the first question that comes to mind for a lot of people is “how do I circumvent this?” The very idea of submitting government identification to a porn website is an extremely nauseating prospect for a lot of viewers in the first place. While some nutcases out there argue that this is a good thing because they want to dictate to you what you can and cannot see, such a perspective completely misses the point being made here. What the government is doing is mandating that people do risky activity to do the same thing they’ve been doing a long time. For many who are risk-averse, this is simply unacceptable. Therefore, the governments only accomplishment is to train more people to defeat the very internet censorship they are implementing in the first place.

The frustrating thing about all of this is knowing full well that politicians were warned by knowledgeable people about this. These warnings were made until the people making these warnings were blue in the face. The politicians, in response, chose to jam their fingers in their ears and scream “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” in response. It ultimately reinforced the perspective that these laws are being made with absolutely no logic or reason behind it. Just, at most, personal beliefs that they (the politicians) can act as the morality police and lobbying money from the snake oil companies that stand to benefit from all of this financially. Sure, they can throw around buzzwords like “industry standard”, “AI”, or “highly effective”, but buzzwords won’t change the very broken nature of this technology in the first place. Because of all of that, we’ll continue to see history repeat over and over and over again – just like what we see here today.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.