- A petition to repeal the online security law of the United Kingdom has already reached more than 340,000 signatures in just a few days
- The British Parliament must consider to debate any petition which obtains more than 100,000 signatures
- The rules for verifying the new age were applied on July 25, 2025, arousing concerns for the digital rights of people
A petition to repeal the British online online security law collected more than 340,000 signatures in just a few days after the entry into force of the new age verification requirements.
From Friday 25 July 2025, all the platforms displaying adult content must verify that all their users are over 18 years old via robust age checks. Social media, game services and dating applications are also necessary to protect minors from harmful content via similar checks.
These requirements have aroused concerns among politicians, digital rights experts and technologists who fear that invasive identity controls can lead to data violations, monitoring and limitations of freedom of expression.
The petition has now crossed 100,000 and will therefore be considered for the debate.July 25, 2025
“We believe that the scope of the online security law is much wider and restrictive than necessary in a free society,” reads the petition created by Alex Baynham, a Londonian who launched a new independent party, Build, in December from last year.
“We believe that parliament should repeal the act and work on the production of proportional legislation rather than risking tightening civil society by speaking of trains, football, video games or even hamsters because it cannot face individual actors.”
While the British Parliament must consider to debate any petition which obtains more than 100,000 signatures, Baynham encourages any person concerned to have his say.
To do this, you must sign the petition, contact your deputy and explain the reason why you are worried. The deadline is October 22, 2025. However, given the enormous answer, a debate can be organized long before that.
Age verification – what are the risks and how to stay safe
New rules are certainly a way to prevent children from accessing inappropriate and dangerous content online. However, age checks are also offset with significant risks for people’s privacy, security and other rights such as freedom of expression and access to information.
You must now be ready to scan your face, credit card or identity document if you want to access content on X, Reddit or Bluesky in the United Kingdom. The same is true if you want to play a new video game over 18, find a new match on a dating application or watch a video reserved for adults only.
This involves trusting these service providers to take good care of this very sensitive data. Something that, as the recent tea application hack shows, is not always possible. A violation of data of this magnitude could expose millions of British to stolen identity, fraud and other dangers.
Likewise, some experts also argue that getting rid of online anonymity could lead to higher monitoring by leaving such access to vulnerable data to abuse.
Experts also fear that new rules can lead to higher censorship, as platforms are now necessary to delete or block all the content defined as harmful.
Despite the British regulator, OFCOM, suggesting against this, the British turned to the best VPN in mass applications to avoid renouncing their most precious data to access a website.
Proton VPN, for example, saw an increase in registrations, recording an hourly increase of more than 1,400% from Friday at midnight.
Speaking to Techradar, a proton spokesman said: “This clearly shows that adults are concerned about the impact of universal age verification laws will have their private life.”
