US States Want to Ban VPNs to Enforce Age Verification
A growing number of US state lawmakers are pushing legislation that would do something remarkable: ban VPN use as a tool for enforcing age verification laws online. Bills like Wisconsin's A.B. 105/S.B. 130 would require websites to block VPN users entirely, framing the move as a way to protect minors from sexual content. The intention may be to protect children, but the approach raises serious questions about privacy, security, and whether the policy would even work.
What the Proposed Laws Actually Say
Wisconsin's proposed legislation, along with similar efforts in Michigan, targets websites that host content deemed harmful to minors. The bills would require those sites to implement age verification systems and, crucially, to block any visitor using a VPN. The reasoning is straightforward on the surface: if someone is hiding their location or identity behind a VPN, age verification becomes harder to enforce.
But the scope of these bills goes further than blocking adult content platforms. The definition of "harmful to minors" in some versions of this legislation is broad enough to potentially capture a wide range of everyday content. That ambiguity alone is cause for concern, since it gives platforms and regulators significant discretion over what gets restricted and who gets blocked.
Why a VPN Ban Fails on Its Own Terms
The central argument for blocking VPN users is that it closes a loophole. In practice, it does not. Anyone genuinely motivated to bypass age restrictions has access to a long list of tools beyond mainstream VPN services. Proxies, Tor, and overseas browsers are all options that would remain accessible. A VPN ban would filter out privacy-conscious adults going about their normal internet use far more effectively than it would stop a determined teenager.
This is a recurring problem with blunt technical restrictions: they tend to catch the law-abiding majority while doing little to stop the minority they are designed to target. Critics of these bills have made exactly this point, arguing that the legislation would fail its stated goal while creating significant collateral damage for ordinary users.
The Real Cost: Your Privacy and Security
Here is where the stakes get genuinely high. Age verification, as currently implemented by most platforms, requires users to submit sensitive personal data, often including government-issued ID, directly to a website. Without a VPN, that data travels without the additional layer of encryption and anonymity that many users rely on to protect themselves online.
Forcing users to hand over identity documents to commercial websites, stripped of any privacy tools, creates serious risks. Data breaches at adult content platforms have already exposed millions of users in the past. Expanding the pool of people submitting verified personal data to these sites, while simultaneously banning the tools that help protect that data in transit, is not a safety upgrade. It is a vulnerability.
Beyond data security, VPN bans carry implications for whistleblowers, journalists, abuse survivors, and anyone else who depends on online privacy for their physical safety. These users are not the target of age verification laws, but they would be caught in the net regardless.
What This Means For You
If you live in Wisconsin, Michigan, or any state considering similar legislation, this is worth paying attention to. A VPN ban does not stay neatly contained to one category of website. Once the legal framework exists to block VPN users as a class, that framework can be applied more broadly over time.
For now, these bills are proposals, not law. But the trend is real. Several US states have already passed age verification requirements, and the push to make those requirements enforceable is intensifying. The question being asked in state legislatures is not whether to protect children online, a goal almost everyone shares, but whether banning privacy tools is a legitimate and effective way to do it. The evidence suggests it is neither.
Staying informed about legislation that affects your digital rights matters. So does understanding what your privacy tools actually do and why they exist. A VPN does not make you anonymous because you have something to hide; it protects your data, your location, and your identity because that information has value and you deserve control over it. You can learn more about how VPN encryption works and why it matters for everyday browsing, not just sensitive use cases.
hide.me VPN is built on the principle that privacy is a right, not a privilege. As lawmakers continue to debate where the line falls between protecting children and overreaching into the privacy of adults, we will keep watching these developments closely and making sure our users have the information they need to understand what is at stake.