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Fears grow that age verification coming to VPNs as a British research firm labels them a 'loophole'
(www.tomshardware.com)
this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
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Which "British research firm" labels them a loophole?
The paper is from the European Parliament Research Service, which is an in-house EU Parliament service. And the "briefing" they published has a section titled "A loop hole that needs closing" that starts "Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well". The words "Some argue" are a hyperlink to a South African news article / opinion piece by some random journalist who writes in a slightly snarky way about VPNs allowing people to bypass the Online Safety Act.
So the TomsHardware article is nonsense - it's an EU briefing paper which seems to think a random south african opinion piece counts as "research". No British research firm, and in fact no real research at all - just crap layerd on crap and making it's way into a crap briefing paper. If this is the quality of the information been given to MEPs, EU citizens should be worried.
Links:
This is what I love about the fedverse. People directly calling out such crappy articles that just spread misleading information for the sake of whatever.
Tom's Hardware should be banned for their trash-tier status. Not only poor journalism, but hostility to users through things like hijacking your back button.