Could the UK ban VPNs if it wanted to?

By Tamlin Magee for Raconteur
Thursday, August 7, 2025

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Some security experts believe the government will indeed legislate to plug the VPN gap. However, any additional requirements would likely be on content platforms rather than VPN providers.

“We will probably see additional legislation pretty soon that will require adult-oriented websites to ban VPN traffic,” says Ilia Kolochenko, an expert in cybersecurity law. “Certainly, some VPNs will remain undetected, but about 90% of the most popular free and commercial VPN services can be fingerprinted – and will likely be blocked by adult-content providers, closing the loophole.”

There are many technical and operational ways to detect the use of VPNs, he notes, but blocking such networks for specific websites is trickier. Kolochenko says the government could purchase VPN subscriptions from all well-known vendors to determine their network ranges, IP addresses and exit points, which could then be blocked directly. Vendors mix and change their exit points to avoid detection, however, so it’d be a Sisyphean endeavour that would require significant time and investment. Devices can also be ‘fingerprinted’ to determine whether they’re connected to a VPN.

Still, to effectively ban VPNs, the government would have to run ‘deep-packet inspection’, thus enabling censors to inspect internet traffic, categorise it and decide what to block. Read Full Article