Mozilla pushes back on UK proposal to age-gate VPNs under Online Safety Act

Mozilla has formally objected to a UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology consultation that floats restricting young people’s access to VPNs, a measure aimed at closing loopholes in age-assurance requirements introduced by the Online Safety Act. The browser maker argues that VPNs are baseline privacy infrastructure, not circumvention tools, and that gating them by age would weaken protections for everyone while doing little to address the underlying causes of online harm.

The submission emphasizes the legitimate uses VPNs serve across the population: remote access to school and work networks, defense against IP-based tracking and profiling, and protection for journalists, activists, and dissidents operating in hostile environments. Mozilla frames young people specifically as a group with heightened exposure to targeted advertising and data collection, making access to privacy tools part of how they learn to navigate the internet competently rather than something to withhold from them.

Instead of restricting privacy technologies, Mozilla wants regulators to focus on platform accountability, better parental controls, and digital literacy investment. The position lands as the UK continues to grapple with practical enforcement of the Online Safety Act, where mandated age checks have predictably driven users toward VPNs to bypass them.