Social media age ban and the tech loophole of VPNs worrying experts
Before Australia’s social media age ban comes into force, tech giants are being warned they have the power to stop kids dodging new age restrictions. But they are failing to act.
Social media companies are under pressure to block VPNs for kids when a new law comes into force at the end of the year.
The minimum age for social media users rises to 16 on December 10, but concerns have been raised that children will use software such as Virtual Privacy Networks (VPN) – an encrypted connection service which hides your online activity, location and masks your IP address – to continue accessing age-restricted sites and content.
A quarter of Aussies use a VPN, many as an added security measure.
The new law applies to major social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube and came after News Corp’s Let Them Be Kids campaign pushed for stronger safety measures online for young people.
The onus is on the social media platforms to prevent under 16s using their site and avoid getting fined up to $49.5m.
CyberCX’s Chief Strategy Officer Alastair MacGibbon, who worked in Silicon Valley for decades, said the social media giants already have the ability to stop children from using this workaround.
He said the platforms make billions of dollars out of knowing their users intimately, so they can target them for advertising.
“I am gobsmacked if these companies claim that they can’t have a pretty red hot go at understanding the age and intent of a user,” Mr MacGibbon said.
The issue has come to light after VPN downloads spiked in the UK following new age restrictions for accessing adult content, such as X, Reddit and adult streaming sites.
Last month, half of the top 10 free apps in Apple’s app download charts in the UK appeared to be for VPN services with an 1800 per cent uptick in downloads.A final report of the Age Assurance Technology Trial to test the ways Australia could enforce the ban found that although checking user ages through a “wide range of approaches” is possible, “there is no one-size-fits-all solution”.
It said platforms would likely need to use a combination of tools to enforce age restrictions, such as using official documents as a “high-assurance method”, age estimation using AI and machine learning to firm up a person’s likely age or age range, and age inference.
“They should use any and all of those things, plus most importantly, their own proprietary knowledge of an individual, which is what they monetise,” Mr MacGibbon said.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said in response to the report social media companies have no excuses.
“We know the platforms have the ability to limit circumvention via VPNs – particularly when it suits their business model,” Ms Wells said.
“The Age Assurance Trial looked at the use of VPNs to get around online age checks, and found there are effective and established tools that combat circumvention.
“Platforms have already shown they can detect if a person is using a VPN using other geo-signals including phone number prefixes.”
Professor Belinda Barnet from Swinburne University said completely banning VPNs was not practical and even if Australia sees an increase in VPN downloads it doesn’t mean they will work for children when they try to use them.
ICMEC Australia CEO Colm Gannon added that children should also be educated on why the legislation was in place and that many VPNs available online are “as dodgy as they come” and have caused data leaks.
“(Some) were used regularly by young people in order to bypass school firewalls and cyber security protections, but at the same time, they were actually being used as harvesting tools for young people’s information,” he said.
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Originally published as Social media age ban and the tech loophole of VPNs worrying experts
