# EFF on Age Verification Laws: VPNs cannot be a permanent solution **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/eff-on-age-verification-laws-vpns-cannot-be-a-permanent-solution/24217 **Category:** News **Tags:** article **Created:** 2025-01-20T20:21:01Z **Posts:** 6 ## Post 1 by @KevPham — 2025-01-20T20:21:01Z > **[VPNs Are Not a Solution to Age Verification Laws](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/01/vpns-are-not-solution-age-verification-laws)** > > VPNs are having a moment. On January 1st, Florida joined 18 other states in implementing an age verification law that burdens Floridians' access to sites that host adult content, including pornography websites like Pornhub. In protest to these laws,... Although VPNs can be an effective workaround to age verification laws and app bans, the EFF argues that they cannot be a reliable long-term solution. Not only do many VPN providers collect their customer’s personal information, they may become ineffective due to changing regulatory requirements. Currently, the EFF only mentions political advocacy as the best method to address these laws. > With varying mandates across different regions, it will become increasingly difficult for VPNs to effectively circumvent these age verification requirements because each state or country may have different methods of enforcement and different types of identification checks, such as government-issued IDs, third-party verification systems, or biometric data. As a result, VPN providers will struggle to keep up with these constantly changing laws and ensure users can bypass the restrictions, especially as more sophisticated detection systems are introduced to identify and block VPN traffic. Does anyone else here share this sentiment regarding VPNs, especially when better, more anonymous alternatives like Tor or Freenet exist? --- ## Post 2 by @yes — 2025-01-20T20:36:12Z Also laws like this (most recently, banning TikTok) does more harm than good. People use shady VPNs to bypass the restrictions.. and you can guess the rest. --- ## Post 3 by @Regime6045 — 2025-01-21T14:18:53Z Well, on the other hand, if it makes VPNs more popular with “normies” who don’t care about their privacy but still want their porn, it would maybe make websites less likely to ban VPN users. (Currently, as a VPN user, you basically can’t use Reddit, Youtube, and Google ReCaptcha.) And governments would face more resistance as well if they want to ban VPNs, if 20% of the population uses a VPN rather than 1%. --- ## Post 4 by @anon36940904 — 2025-01-21T15:01:24Z > [@Regime6045](#): > > . (Currently, as a VPN user, you basically can’t use Reddit, Youtube, and Google ReCaptcha.) Well, that’s not true. So, don’t say it in a way claiming it to be true for all at all times. --- ## Post 5 by @anon29374801 — 2025-01-21T15:19:33Z > [@Regime6045](#): > > Well, on the other hand, if it makes VPNs more popular with “normies” who don’t care about their privacy but still want their porn, it would maybe make websites less likely to ban VPN users. This misses the key point of the article, which is VPNs are not a long term solution. It also seems like you assume the majority of users would end up using a reputable VPN when I think history has shown us it is much more likely users will shift trust from a privacy invasive ISP for a privacy invasive VPN. --- ## Post 6 by @Regime6045 — 2025-01-21T15:22:41Z Reddit and Youtube require that you make an account and log in. ReCaptcha is often unsolvable (“We’re sorry, but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.”), at least when you’re not logged in to Google. At least for me, using Firefox + uBO + VPN, I get these unsolvable captchas at least half of the time. With VPN off this doesn’t happen. edit: > [@anon29374801](#): > > It also seems like you assume the majority of users would end up using a reputable VPN when I think history has shown us it is much more likely users will shift trust from a privacy invasive ISP for a privacy invasive VPN. Yes but that’s “not my problem” as long as it normalizes the use of VPNs in general.