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CANBERRA, Australia—Australia’s digital regulator has told Parliament it will examine whether widely available virtual private networks, or VPNs, are being used to bypass the country’s age-verification rules for pornography websites.
Budget documents submitted to the Australian Senate in May show that eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s office is concerned that platforms covered by technology industry codes may still be receiving web traffic from IP addresses in Australia that has not gone through age verification.
“Under the codes, there are requirements that service providers must take reasonable steps to prevent workarounds like VPNs so eSafety will look at this when considering compliance with codes,” the budget documents state. The documents include an appropriations proposal for Grant’s office.
The concern follows Australian search-engine data from March showing increased interest in the terms “VPN” and “virtual private network.” The rise came as authorities began enforcing age-verification requirements for age-restricted platforms and moved to restrict social media access for minors.
The introduction of the under-16 social-media ban affected a broad range of online services in Australia. Around the same period, Aylo, the parent company of Pornhub.com, said its platforms would be restricted in Australia to comply with the new laws.
Industry codes in Australia require the parent companies of online pornography providers to establish and enforce “appropriate age assurance measures.” Those measures can include identity checks, credit-card verification, artificial-intelligence-assisted biometric age estimation, and other methods.
VPNs, however, have long been used to bypass content blocks and age-verification rules in Australia, the United States, and other countries.
Grant’s office told members of the Australian Senate that it is working on ways to limit unverified VPN traffic.
“This is similar to eSafety’s regulatory guidance for the social media minimum age, where eSafety considers VPN detection as a reasonable step to prevent underage users from having an account,” the documents submitted by Grant’s office state.
“[The] Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport, and the Arts knows that tech companies can tell when a VPN is in use.”
