The UK government is reportedly considering age-gating or restricting access to VPN services. As someone who builds and manages network infrastructure for a living, I need to explain why this is not just a bad idea - it's a technically impossible one.
What is a VPN, really?
Politicians talk about VPNs like they're some kind of dark web portal. They're not. A VPN is an encrypted tunnel between your device and a server. That's it. The same technology that:
- Lets every remote worker in the UK access their company network
- Protects NHS staff accessing patient records from home
- Allows government employees to work securely outside Whitehall
- Keeps your bank details safe on public WiFi
Banning or restricting VPNs means banning or restricting all of those things too. There is no technical way to allow "good" VPNs and block "bad" ones. The encryption is identical. The protocols are identical. A VPN used by a civil servant and a VPN used by a teenager look exactly the same to any system trying to detect them.
"We'll just make VPN providers verify age"
Right. Let's think about this for more than thirty seconds.
There are thousands of VPN providers worldwide. The UK government has jurisdiction over precisely none of the ones based outside the UK. NordVPN is in Panama. ExpressVPN is in the British Virgin Islands. Mullvad is in Sweden and famously doesn't even know who their customers are - by design.
What about blocking access to these services? VPN protocols can run on any port, including port 443 - the same port your browser uses for every HTTPS website. Blocking VPN traffic without also blocking normal web browsing is like trying to ban blue cars on the motorway without being able to see colours.
I can build an undetectable VPN in ten minutes
This isn't a hypothetical. This is what I did last Tuesday.
- Rent a server from any cloud provider (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS) - takes 2 minutes, costs £4/month
- Install WireGuard - one command:
apt install wireguard - Generate keys - two commands
- Configure - a 10-line config file
- Connect - done
Total time: under 10 minutes. Total cost: less than a pint. The traffic looks identical to normal HTTPS traffic. No ISP, no government filter, no "age verification gateway" can distinguish it from me browsing BBC News.
If I can do this, so can any teenager with a YouTube tutorial. So can any criminal. So can anyone the government claims to be targeting with this policy. The only people who can't do this are the non-technical majority who would lose access to legitimate privacy tools.
The economic damage would be immediate
The UK tech sector contributes over £150 billion to the economy. Every tech company, every startup, every remote worker depends on VPN technology daily.
If the UK becomes the country where VPNs are restricted: - International companies pull their UK offices (why operate somewhere you can't secure your communications?) - Startups choose Dublin, Amsterdam, or Berlin instead of London - Remote workers for international companies can't function - The UK's position as a tech hub - already weakened post-Brexit - collapses entirely
The EU has explicitly stated it will not mandate encryption backdoors or restrict VPN access because they understand this. We would be voluntarily making ourselves a digital island while our nearest competitors welcome the businesses we push away.
"But what about the children?"
I have two children. I grew up on an unregulated internet. I understand this concern deeply and personally.
Here's the thing: VPN restrictions don't protect children. A child determined to bypass age verification will find a way - the tools are free, the tutorials are everywhere, and the technology is mathematically impossible to block.
What actually protects children: - Parental involvement - knowing what your kids do online, having conversations about it - Device-level controls - iOS Screen Time, Google Family Link, router-level filtering - Education - teaching children about online risks, just as we teach them about road safety - Platform accountability - making social media companies responsible for their recommendation algorithms that push harmful content to minors
None of these require breaking encryption. None of these require banning VPNs. None of these require building a surveillance infrastructure that puts every citizen's privacy at risk.
The real question
Why is the government pursuing technically impossible solutions that wouldn't work even if they were possible, while ignoring practical solutions that would actually help?
I don't think it's malice. I think it's ignorance. These are legislators and civil servants who fundamentally do not understand the technology they're trying to regulate. They think "ban VPNs" is like "ban knives in shops" - a simple restriction with a simple enforcement mechanism.
It isn't. And until we have technically literate people involved in these decisions, we'll keep getting policies that sound good in a headline and fall apart under the slightest scrutiny.
*I'm a developer and network engineer from Northamptonshire. I build the infrastructure these policies would break. If you're involved in making these decisions and want to understand why they won't work, I'm happy to explain - in plain English, no agenda, no jargon. Get in touch .*
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