- Malaysia strengthens measures against VPNs used to facilitate crime
- Abuse includes circumventing new social media ban for under-16s
- Authorities have stressed that owning or using a VPN is not an offense.
Malaysia is ready to take action if VPNs are used to facilitate criminal activities or help residents circumvent the new age limit on social media.
According to local reports, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Shamsul Anuar Nasarah said the government was working closely with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to counter VPNs and impersonated identities that are being used to circumvent newly imposed age limits on social media.
For the many people looking for the best VPN services to protect their browsing, encrypt their traffic, or simply keep their data out of reach of advertisers, what’s reassuring is that the tool itself isn’t the target. What authorities want to hit is the small portion of activity where a VPN is used as a shield for something illegal.
What Malaysia actually announced
The comments were made during a question-and-answer session on cybercrime and age verification. Shamsul Anuar explained that the police would rely on public complaints and their own investigations to identify cases of misuse of VPNs or identity masking tools, and that such misuse could be treated as an additional element of an offense.
He made it clear that the crackdown was on behavior, not software. The minister touted the effort as part of Malaysia’s broader efforts to protect children online, pointing to a sharp increase in offenses.
This is in addition to Malaysia’s ban on social media for under-16s, which came into effect on June 1, 2026 under the Online Safety Act 2025. Major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, must now verify the age of users and prevent under-16s from signing up, with failure to comply carrying penalties of up to RM10 million.
VPNs come into the picture because they are an obvious way to make a user appear to be in a place where the rules don’t apply. Age verification laws elsewhere, such as Australia and the United Kingdom, have repeatedly triggered spikes in VPN sign-ups, many of whom are often adults seeking to protect the sensitive documents these systems ask them to hand over.
What this means for everyday VPN users
For most people, this isn’t a reason to stop using a VPN, nor is it a disguised ban.
Digital rights groups have, however, sharply criticized the age verification model behind the ban.
ARTICLE 19, alongside local partners, argued that the measure was rushed, disproportionate and risked normalizing surveillance while exposing people’s identity documents and biometric data to misuse.
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