Why VPNs Came Under Scrutiny

The issue arose as the UK rolled out tougher online safety rules requiring websites and apps hosting adult content to introduce stronger age verification. Some campaigners argued that children could simply use VPNs to disguise their location or identity and bypass those checks, prompting calls for restrictions on VPN services themselves.

However, the government decided to investigate how children were actually circumventing age restrictions before introducing any new controls, commissioning research to understand how VPNs were being used in practice.

Why The Government Changed Course

The decision follows research commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) into how children use VPNs and attempt to bypass online age restrictions. The findings challenged one of the key assumptions behind proposals to limit VPN use.

The nationally representative study of more than 2,000 children aged 11 to 17 found that around a quarter (26 per cent) had used a VPN. However, privacy was the most common reason for doing so, with 30 per cent of VPN users saying they used one to keep their online activity private. Just 22 per cent of VPN users, equivalent to around 7 per cent of all children surveyed, said they used a VPN specifically to access age-restricted websites, apps or games.

By comparison, the research found that pretending to be older was a far more common way of bypassing age checks. Among children who had successfully circumvented age verification, 63 per cent said they had done so by posing as someone older, most commonly by entering a false date of birth.

Privacy Versus Circumvention

The findings appear to have played a significant role in shaping government policy. Online Safety Minister Kanishka Narayan confirmed the decision while speaking on BBC Breakfast, saying: “We decided not to limit VPNs.”

Technology Secretary Liz Kendall reinforced that position in a written ministerial statement, explaining that VPNs have “legitimate privacy and security uses” and confirming that the government would not seek to age-gate or restrict access to them.

The research also highlighted how widely privacy is valued by younger internet users. Overall, 86 per cent of children surveyed said it was important that their online activity remained private, while 81 per cent of VPN users said using one made them feel safer online.

Responsibility Moves To Online Platforms

Rather than restricting privacy tools themselves, the government has decided that online platforms should bear greater responsibility for preventing children from getting around age assurance requirements.

Under the new approach, platforms will be expected to take “robust steps” to detect and prevent under-age users circumventing age checks. Ofcom has been asked to report by October on what robust age assurance should look like for older teenagers, while Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office will also examine how platforms can better identify attempts to use VPNs to bypass age restrictions.

The government has also said it intends to engage directly with VPN providers about possible voluntary measures while keeping the issue under review.

A Win For Privacy Campaigners

The decision has been widely welcomed by digital rights organisations and cyber security experts, many of whom had argued that restricting VPNs would have created far wider problems than it solved.

VPNs are widely used by businesses to secure remote access to company systems, protect sensitive communications, encrypt internet traffic on public Wi-Fi and help safeguard employees travelling internationally. They are also commonly used by journalists, activists, researchers and individuals seeking greater online privacy.

The government’s own research supports that broader picture. Many children reported using VPNs for reasons unrelated to age-restricted content, including accessing services available in other countries, protecting their personal information and improving online privacy.

The findings suggest that attempting to restrict VPNs would have affected many legitimate users while doing relatively little to prevent children bypassing online age restrictions.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For businesses, the government’s decision provides welcome certainty that VPNs continue to be recognised as legitimate cyber security tools rather than technologies primarily associated with bypassing online controls.

The wider lesson extends beyond VPNs themselves. As governments introduce new AI, online safety and digital regulation, there is growing recognition that effective policy needs to be evidence-led rather than based on assumptions about how technology is used. In this case, the government’s own research showed that privacy, not circumvention, was the main reason children were using VPNs.

Organisations should therefore continue encouraging the appropriate use of VPNs as part of a wider cyber security strategy, particularly for remote working and secure communications. At the same time, businesses that provide online services should expect increasing scrutiny over how they verify users’ ages and prevent circumvention, as regulators place greater responsibility on platforms rather than on the privacy technologies that many legitimate users rely upon.

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What Kind of Harmful Content? 

The type of content Microsoft’s developed Azure AI Content Safety to filter out includes anything that’s offensive, risky, or undesirable, e.g. “profanity, adult content, gore, violence, hate speech” and more. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, where the new Content Safety moderation filter will be deployed (ChatGPT is available in the Azure OpenAI Service). 

What’s The Problem? 

Microsoft says that the impact of harmful content on platforms goes beyond user dissatisfaction and can damage a brand’s image, erode user trust, undermine long-term financial stability, and even expose the platform to potential legal liabilities.  As well as the problem of user-generated content, the new feature uses AI to filter out the growing problem of AI-generated harmful content, which includes inaccurate content (misinformation – perhaps generated by AI ‘hallucinations’). 

A Sophisticated AI Moderation Tool 

Although Microsoft’s AI Content Safety filtering feature sounds as though it’s primarily designed to protect private users, it’s actually primarily designed to protect companies and their brands from the risks and challenges of moderation and of the rub-off associations and legal problems of having harmful content and misinformation or disinformation published on their platforms (a moderation tool), with users being the secondary beneficiaries – if it’s filtered out, they won’t see it (a win-win). 

With Microsoft being a major investor in AI (i.e. OpenAI) it also appears to have a wider purpose that utilises this and shows that AI can have a really positive purpose, countering the fear stories of AI running away with itself and wiping out humanity. 

In a nutshell, Microsoft says its new Azure AI Content Safety Filtering feature ensures “accuracy, reliability, and absence of harmful or inappropriate materials in AI-generated outputs” and “protects users from misinformation and potential harm but also upholds ethical standards and builds trust in AI technologies” which Microsoft says will help “create a safer digital environment that promotes responsible use of AI and safeguards the well-being of individuals and society as a whole”. 

How Does It Work and What Can It Do? 

The types of detection and filtering possible and the capabilities of AI Content Safety includes: 

– Offering moderation of visual and text content. 

– A ‘Severity’ metric,’ which (on scale of 0 to 7) gives an indication of the severity of specific content (safe 0-1, low 2-3, medium 4-5, and high 6-7) which enables businesses to assess the level of threat posed by certain content, make informed decisions, and take proactive measures. A severity level of 7 (the highest), for example, covers content that “endorses, glorifies, or promotes extreme forms of harmful instruction and activity towards Identity Groups”. 

– The multi-category filtering of harmful content across the domains of Hate, Violence, Self-Harm, and Sex. 

– The use of AI algorithms to scan, analyse, and moderate visual content because Microsoft says digital communication also relies heavily on visuals. 

– Moderation across multiple languages. 

How? 

Businesses can choose to operate and use the new filtering system either via API/SDK integration (for automated content analysis) or by using the more hands-on ‘Content Safety Studio’ dashboard-style, web-based interface. 

AWS 

Amazon also has a similar content moderation service for its AWS called ‘Amazon Rekognition.’ It also uses a hierarchical taxonomy to label categories of inappropriate or offensive content and has “DetectModerationLabels” in operation to detect inappropriate or offensive content in images. 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

As any social media platform or larger company will be able to testify, moderation of content posts is a major task and human moderators alone can’t really scale efficiently to meet these the demands quickly or well enough, so companies need a more intelligent, cost-effective, reliable, and scalable solution.

The costs of not tackling offensive and inappropriate content don’t just relate to poor user experiences but can lead to expensive legal issues, loss of brand reputation, and more. Whereas before generative AI arrived on the scene, it was bad enough trying to moderate just the human-generated content, with the addition of AI-generated content, moderation of offensive content has become exponentially harder. It makes sense, therefore, for Microsoft to leverage the power of its own considerable AI investment to offer an intelligent system to businesses that covers both images and texts, uses an ordered and understandable system of categorisation, and offers businesses the choice of an automated or more hands-on dashboard version.

AI offers a level of reliability, scalability, and affordability that wasn’t available before, thereby reducing risk and worry for businesses. The recent events of the conflict in Israel and Gaza (plus the posting of horrific images and videos which have prompted the deletion of social media apps for children) illustrates just how bad some content posts can be, although images of self-harm, violence, hate speech, and more have long been a source of concern for all web users.

Microsoft’s AI Content Safety system therefore gives businesses a way to ensure that their own platform is free of offensive and damaging content. Furthermore, in protecting themselves, it follows that customers and other web users and viewers are also spared and protected from the bad experience and effects that some content can cause.

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