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Updated Nov. 2, with a new porn ban confirmed and further analysis on the mass circumvention of new laws, triggering security warnings.

If you are a user of pornographic websites then everything has suddenly changed. For the first time, your freedom to watch the content where you want, on the device you want is being stopped. New data says this will kill traffic. But what's really happening is that millions are using VPNs to hide their location, and that's dangerous.

Estimates suggest half of adults access adult websites, and increasingly on their iPhone or Android phone. Porn bans in multiple U.S. states and European countries -- whether as a blanket restriction or by mandating age verification -- are changing behaviors.

But it's not stopping adults accessing porn. And so when you read the news this week, that Pornhub, the world's largest porn site, has seen a 77% drop in U.K. traffic following the country's Online Safety Act, you can completely ignore it. It's not true.

What's actually happening is that U.K. adults are turning to VPNs to mask their locations. Just as residents of U.S. states affecting bans now pretend to be someplace else. Pornhub makes this as easy as possible. It makes no effort to pierce the VPN veil.

What do we mean by this? VPNs tunnel your web traffic via servers rather than directly. This hides your IP address and -- if it's a good VPN -- secures your traffic. If the server is located overseas, the websites you visit assume that's where you are. But most websites are not trying to stop visitors from specific locations,

The location of the server is not the only telltale sign. A website could look at your browser settings or cellular settings or recognize you from previous visits. But they elect not to. That's why it's harder to watch live sports from your usual provider when you're away from home, their market restrictions try to catch you out. Porn sites do not.

With Pornhub you can visit the domain, see the page warning you to verify your age or that you're in a restricted location, and then change your VPN location and refresh the page. The page's logic doesn't even flag that you switched from London to New York in seconds. It makes a mockery of legislation always destined to be unenforceable.

This despite the U.K. regulator reportedly saying "don't lie to us," to a roomful "of pornography site owners and employees during a lunchtime presentation explaining the new age verification requirements introduced in July as part of the act's measures to stop children seeing pornography. 'Be honest and open. If your measures are not good enough yet, put that on your risk assessment'."

TL;DR, they're not good enough. The fact a 77% drop in porn site traffic can actually be reported as a real thing tells you all you need to know. This is a game that regulators, whether in the U.S. or Europe, cannot win. Not without much more stringent technical controls, as we saw with the TikTok ban that was enforceable.

The U.K regulator told the BBC that "our new rules end the era of an age-blind internet, when many sites and apps have undertaken no meaningful checks to see if children were using their services." That clearly shows a lack of understanding across regulators.

Because, as the BBC also reported, while "Ofcom told the BBC it believed the number of people using VPNs for general use reached 1.5 million daily in July, after the law came in, but has since decreased to around one million. Meanwhile, research by Cybernews, counted more than 10.7 million downloads of VPN apps in the U.K. from the Google Play Store and Apple App Store across 2025."

Just a few years ago, very few iPhone and Android users outside "dark" locations such as China, Russia or Iran spent time worrying about VPNs. Most didn't have any installed and likely didn't even understand what these apps do.

But porn bans and the short-lived U.S. TikTok ban have turned VPNs into must-have apps, no longer the preserve of internet users behind iron or bamboo curtains or traveling business folk worried about hotel WiFi.

So here's the warning -- VPNs are dangerous. You are trusting all your content to a third-party provider who can see where you are and the websites you visit. At a minimum. There are plenty of reports of rogue VPNs doing much worse than that. In particular, you must avoid free VPNs and Chinese VPNs. Stick to bluechip options.

When you read that Pornhub traffic is down 77%, what you're actually reading is that VPN usage is up massively. It's more than likely that most of that huge 77% traffic drop is just pretending to be in any one of dozens of countries with no restrictions at all.

This problem is about to get worse. Italian regulators have just confirmed age verification starts November 12th," with "obligations for sites and platforms that distribute pornographic content coming into force."

Italy has also published a list of "entities currently disseminating pornographic content." The regulator warns that these entities must implement age verification systems to continue disseminating their content in our country. Failure to comply with this requirement will result in the Authority issuing a warning and imposing fines."

If you're going to install and use a VPN, please adhere to these guidelines: