Online Safety Regulation Increases Attention to VPNs: Privacy Implications of the UK Online Safety Act

The UK Online Safety Act, particularly the mandatory age verification requirement for platforms hosting pornographic content in July 2025, has significantly increased user interest and activity in Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). Analysis of Reddit discourse and Google search trends indicates a substantial behavioral shift towards VPN use among UK residents, driven by perceived access restrictions and privacy concerns.

Why it matters

This trend indicates that regulatory actions aimed at online safety can have unintended consequences on user behavior and privacy. Organizations must understand how policy changes can drive adoption of technologies like VPNs, potentially complicating data collection, content moderation, and compliance efforts. It highlights the need for a comprehensive view of how regulation interacts with user autonomy and privacy.

Key insights

• The UK Online Safety Act, enacted in 2023, includes phased implementation of illegal-content enforcement (March 2025) and mandatory age verification (July 2025).
• User behavioral response is predominantly concentrated around the July 2025 deadline for mandatory age verification on pornographic content platforms.
• Google search interest for VPNs in the UK increased by 147% at the July 2025 deadline.
• Activity from UK-resident users on VPN-related subreddits increased by 145% around the same deadline.
• The research involved analyzing Reddit discourse across VPN and UK Politics communities, alongside a privacy-policy risk analysis of 69 VPN services.

Source

arXiv — Computers and Society — https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.05273