The eSafety commission will assess whether adult sites are allowing users to bypass Australia’s new age verification restrictions with virtual private networks (VPNs). Nine in 10 of the most visited adult sites used by Australians now have age checks for users, according to the online safety regulator, but eSafety has said it will evaluate whether those sites are permitting users to circumvent restrictions using VPNs.
New Age Verification Codes
In March, new codes required adult sites, along with other services such as AI companion chatbots and app stores, to implement age verification for users attempting to access pornography, extremely violent material, or self-harm content, in order to block under-18s from access. Aylo, the parent company of popular adult sites including Pornhub, initially blocked access for Australian users but has since removed pornographic content from the free version of its sites, allowing only paying subscribers to access pornography, which serves as a form of age check.
Monitoring Compliance
In briefing documents prepared for May’s Senate estimates hearings, released under freedom of information laws this week, the eSafety commissioner stated it had been monitoring compliance of the top 30 sites visited by Australians and contacted 26 of these sites that did not have age assurance in place, leading to some adding the age checks. The documents reveal approximately “90% of the most-visited pornography sites by Australians in 2025 have introduced age assurance at the 18+ threshold”.
No Evidence of Traffic Migration
The regulator said it was monitoring closely whether users might be migrating to sites that do not have age controls in place but said “based on data available to date, there is no evidence of traffic consolidation or migration to a single service beyond the top five sites”. “They are still the biggest sources of online pornography in Australia.”
VPN Usage and Loopholes
Guardian Australia reported in March a surge in Australian users downloading VPN apps to bypass the restrictions. A VPN allows a user to appear to a site to be in a different location, meaning they could appear outside Australia in a location not subject to the requirements. eSafety said in the documents it had not “observed peaks in VPN downloads that would solely account for the drop in user numbers across the top 5 services in particular”.
Reasonable Steps Required
Similar to the expectations of social media companies for the under-16s ban, eSafety said it was expected under the codes that sites “must take reasonable steps” to prevent workarounds like VPNs, and eSafety “will look at this when considering compliance”. As the UK prepares to follow Australia in its own social media ban, officials last month suggested VPNs could be regulated – including requiring age checks for users – but Australia has so far limited its focus on VPNs to ensuring platforms are detecting their use.
4chan Not Included in Ban
In October last year, Senator Fatima Payman raised questions with eSafety about why the website 4chan was not included in the social media ban alongside the major platforms considering the content hosted on the site. The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said 4chan was “one of the darker sites on the web” but said it had not been assessed. The documents outline eSafety’s reasoning for this decision, stating that as of 30 April 2026, 4chan had received 25.3m site visits from Australian users in the preceding 12 months, compared to Facebook at 2bn and Reddit 1.8bn. “4chan site visits are ~98% lower than Facebook and Reddit,” eSafety said.
