Utah will ban the use of VPNs to circumvent age verification

Utah is set to become the first state to ban the use of… VPNs To avoid age verification hurdles after the legislation came into effect on Wednesday.

Senate Bill 73 The websites will hold accountable people who hide their locations while in Utah, and will effectively treat anyone who connects to a Utah VPN as someone who is physically present in Utah for age verification purposes.

The legislation follows similar bills proposed by Wisconsin and Michigan It is seen as the first major US step toward regulating the use of VPNs to avoid age verification.

However, privacy advocates warn that the legislation could lead to a blanket ban of all VPN addresses in a “technical strike that no company likely can win.” the The Electronic Frontier Consortium wrote that “If a website cannot reliably discover a VPN user’s true location and the law requires it to do so for all users in a particular country, the legal risks could prompt the site to either block all known VPN IP addresses, or enforce age verification for every visitor globally.”

Both last year Australia and UK has been enacted Age verification measures To restrict access to “harmful content”. While Australian legislation Described as a “total disaster” By Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, it was reported that children in the United Kingdom were Mustache drawing To overcome age barriers.

Representatives for the EFF and Utah State Senate did not immediately respond to CNET’s request for more information.