Nine in Ten Top Adult Sites Now Check Ages in Australia, But VPN Workarounds Are Next on the Regulator's List
Australia's online safety watchdog says most major adult platforms have put age gates in place since March. Now it wants to know whether a simple privacy tool is letting users walk straight around them.
Key points
- Nine in ten of the 30 most-visited adult websites used by Australians now ask users to verify their age, as of mid-2025.
- Codes that came into force in March 2025 require adult sites, app stores, and AI companion chatbots to block anyone under 18 from pornography, extreme violence, or self-harm content.
- Australia's eSafety Commissioner is now assessing whether VPN use, which lets a device appear to be browsing from a different country, renders those checks pointless.
- Three of the 30 most-visited sites are still not compliant.
Australia's eSafety Commissioner has confirmed that nine in ten of the 30 most-visited adult websites used by people in Australia now show age verification screens before granting access. Before March, no such legal obligation existed.
The March 2025 codes are legally binding, not voluntary. They require adult content platforms to verify a user's age before showing pornography, extremely violent material, or content related to self-harm. AI companion chatbots (apps designed to simulate human conversation and relationship) and app stores fall under the same rules.
The goal: stop under-18s from reaching that material.
Can teenagers just use a VPN to get around the checks?
Possibly, and eSafety says it will look into that next. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, disguises where your internet connection is coming from. It can make a device in Sydney appear to be browsing from the United States, where Australian age rules don't apply. VPNs are legal, widely used by adults for privacy, and free in many cases, which means a determined teenager could reach a blocked site as if they were an overseas visitor.
ESafety hasn't said what action it would take if sites prove easily bypassable. The regulator is still in the assessment phase.
The compliance figures, first reported by Guardian Australia, come from eSafety's own monitoring rather than self-reported platform data. That distinction matters: it's harder for a non-compliant site to argue the numbers are wrong.
We reported in July on how difficult age verification proves in practice, finding that the problem isn't passing the law, it's proving how old anyone actually is. VPNs are a clean illustration of that gap: an age gate on a website means nothing to a user who can route around it in two minutes.
For parents and carers, age gates are one layer, not a complete solution. A child who knows about VPNs, or borrows a verified account, can still find ways through. Controls at the router or device level, combined with direct conversations about online content, remain the more reliable combination.
ESafety hasn't published a timeline for its VPN review.
