Mozilla, the non-profit tech giant behind the Firefox browser and has warned regulators that age-restricting VPNs “would undermine the privacy and security of all users”.
In a formal submission to the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Mozilla pushed back against a recent consultation that considers age-gating the best VPN services to stop minors from bypassing age checks mandated by the Online Safety Act.
Kids can’t actually get access to the internet on their own. You have to purchase an internet connection of some sort via a provider and kids can’t do that. Public access, like libraries, would have to use ID/age verification in person, sure. But not the general internet. That responsibility falls to the parents of the children and you can create whatever punitive laws you want to punish and hold parents accountable for preventing their kids from accessing the internet.
It’s literally the same thing we do with prescription drugs and alcohol. Some people have to lock them up, but mostly those bottles are unlocked and accessible to kids all over the world and we expect the parents to do the gatekeeping and then punish/hold the parents accountable when they don’t.