After the UK, France, and multiple US States, Italy has now enforced its mandatory age verification system.

Starting today, November 12, 2025, Italians must prove they are at least 18 years old to access websites displaying adult-only content.

While the country’s communications authority, AGCOM, ensures Italy’s system was built on a “double anonymity” model to protect people’s privacy, the interest in VPN apps saw a steep rise since the October 31 announcement.

As we have seen in the UK, such an increase in demand may push users towards insecure freebies. These applications, however, instead of being a quick and easy fix, could further put people’s data in danger.

Multiple reports have, in fact, shown time and time again how, despite a few of the best free VPN apps, many free applications you can find in official app stores are untrustworthy due to security vulnerabilities, data logging, malware, and hidden ownership.

The good news is that many premium VPN providers slash their pricing for Black Friday. Even better, some of the very best VPN services are already offering their Black Friday VPN deal, including TechRadar’s top pick NordVPN.

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Age verification and VPNs − all you need to know

A virtual private network (VPN) is security software that encrypts users’ internet connections, while spoofing their real IP address by rerouting traffic via one of its international servers.

The latter skill is exactly the reason why VPNs have also become the perfect tool to bypass new mandatory age verification across the world. A reputation that has attracted increasingly more attention from lawmakers.

Wisconsin and Michigan went as far as to consider an obligation to block VPN traffic within the law. If it passes, the latter proposal would not only force internet service providers to monitor and block VPN connections, but also ban the promotion or sale of circumvention tools to access prohibited material. A bill that Proton, the company behind the popular Proton VPN product, defined as “a danger for the political discourse.”

At the same time, UK politicians have deemed this technology a “loophole that needs closing,” despite repeatedly saying that a VPN ban is off the cards.

As per AGCOM’s provisions, the only obligation regarding VPNs applies to all entities required by law to implement the age verification system, meaning the listed adult sites. These providers “must not promote or otherwise refer to any mechanism for circumventing age assurance systems.”

Whether the people using an age verification VPN are privacy-conscious users not willing to share their most sensitive details with a third party, or minors looking to evade age checks, is hard to know − most likely, a mix of both.

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