Australia's eSafety Commissioner Wants Platforms to Actively Detect VPNs

Documents obtained under Australia’s Freedom of Information laws show the eSafety Commissioner expects platforms and service providers to actively detect and block VPN workarounds used to bypass age-restricted content and Australia’s under-16 social media ban, according to reporting by The Guardian and covered by TechRadar in early July 2026.

What the documents actually say

The FOI documents state that under Australia’s industry codes, “service providers must take reasonable steps to prevent workarounds like VPNs,” and that eSafety will factor VPN detection into how it assesses whether a platform is complying with those codes. That’s a meaningfully different posture than a blanket VPN ban. Instead, it puts the enforcement burden on platforms themselves, who now have regulatory reason to build or license VPN-detection tooling into their age-check systems.

Two details make this more than a theoretical threat. First, the government’s ongoing Age Assurance Technology Trial reportedly convinced regulators that network-level VPN detection is technically feasible at scale, not just possible in principle. Second, the relevant department has confirmed it understands that tech companies already have the capability to identify when a user is connecting through a VPN, which removes the “this isn’t technically possible yet” defense platforms might otherwise raise.

Why this matters beyond Australia

Australia has positioned itself as an early mover on strict social media age verification, and other jurisdictions have explicitly cited it as a model. Our coverage of the UK’s own under-16 proposals notes that roughly 60% of young people in Australia report bypassing the existing ban, a statistic reportedly driving similar VPN-restriction pressure in the UK. If Australia’s platform-level VPN detection requirement holds up and proves effective, expect other governments building similar age-verification regimes, the UK, the EU, and several US states among them, to point to it as precedent.

This is a different mechanism from the site self-blocking seen elsewhere. France’s approach, covered in our best VPN for France guide, saw adult platforms like Pornhub voluntarily block an entire country rather than comply with verification requirements. Australia’s approach instead pressures platforms to actively fight VPN circumvention rather than simply blocking a market outright, a more aggressive and more technically involved posture.

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Does this mean VPNs will stop working in Australia?

Not straightforwardly, and not yet. VPN detection at the network or platform level is an arms race, not a solved problem. Detection systems typically work by identifying known VPN server IP ranges, unusual traffic patterns, or DNS inconsistencies, all of which providers actively work to obscure through obfuscated protocols, residential IP pools, and frequent server rotation. A regulatory expectation that platforms attempt detection is not the same as detection reliably succeeding against every VPN, particularly ones built with evading exactly this kind of scrutiny in mind.

What it does mean is that platforms operating in Australia now have a compliance incentive to invest in detection tooling they might otherwise have skipped, which raises the baseline difficulty of casual VPN circumvention even if it doesn’t eliminate it. Basic, unobfuscated VPN connections through well-known commercial IP ranges are the most likely to get flagged first.

What Australian VPN users should do

If you’re using a VPN in Australia to access services affected by these rules, the practical response is the same one that applies anywhere detection pressure is rising: prioritize providers with dedicated obfuscation technology designed to disguise VPN traffic as ordinary encrypted web traffic, rather than relying on a basic connection through a widely recognized commercial server range. NordVPN’s NordWhisper protocol and Proton VPN’s Stealth protocol are both built specifically for this kind of resistant environment, the same category of tool covered in our obfuscated servers explainer.

It’s also worth remembering that eSafety’s framework targets platform compliance, not individual VPN users directly, similar to the structural distinction in Utah’s SB 73, which our Utah VPN law coverage breaks down. The legal and practical pressure sits primarily on the companies running the platforms, not on the person connecting to a VPN server.

How platform-level VPN detection actually works

Understanding the mechanics helps explain why this is a harder problem for regulators than it sounds. Detection systems generally rely on a handful of signals: matching your IP address against known ranges belonging to commercial VPN and hosting providers, looking for the specific latency and packet patterns that certain VPN protocols produce, checking whether many accounts are suddenly connecting from the same narrow IP block, nection typically shows. None of these signals is individually conclusive, which is why detection systems generally combine several before flagging a connection, and why a well-obfuscated VPN can still slip through: it’s specifically designed to avoid producing the telltale patterns these systems look for in the first place.

The arms-race dynamic cuts both ways, though. As platforms invest in better detection, providers respond with better obfuscation, rotating IP ranges faster, disguising VPN handshakes as ordinary HTTPS traffic, and in some cases routing through residential IP pools that are indistinguishable from a genuine home internet connection. This is the same cycle that’s played out for years in countries with much more aggressive blocking regimes, China’s Great Firewall being the most developed example, and it rarely ends in a clean, permanent win for either side. Australia’s platforms are entering a fight that other, more determined state-level censors haven’t fully won after a decade of trying.

The under-16 social media ban context

This detection push doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s a direct response to Australia’s under-16 social media ban, which took effect with platforms required to verify user age and restrict access for younger users. Reports that roughly 60% of young people found workarounds, VPNs prominent among them, effectively meant the ban was leaking badly enough that regulators felt compelled to escalate rather than accept the gap as an acceptable cost of the policy. That escalation is what produced the FOI documents showing eSafety now treating VPN detection as a “reasonable step” platforms should be taking.

This puts platforms in an uncomfortable position. Building or licensing effective VPN detection is expensive and technically demanding, and doing it imperfectly, which is the realistic outcome given the arms race described above, risks both regulatory criticism for insufficient effort and user backlash for flagging legitimate VPN use unrelated to circumventing the age ban, like remote workers, privacy-conscious browsing, or accessing the same streaming catalog Australians have always used VPNs for.

What comes next

The FOI documents represent regulatory expectation and pressure, not a finished, enforced technical mandate yet. Whether platforms actually build effective detection, and whether Australian courts or further legislation formalize the “reasonable steps” language into something with real teeth, remains to be seen. Given how quickly Australia moved from proposing the under-16 ban to enforcing it, and how explicitly other governments are watching this experiment, it’s reasonable to expect concrete detection requirements, rather than vague guidance, within the next enforcement cycle. Anyone relying on a VPN for legitimate reasons in Australia should treat obfuscation as a baseline feature to look for now, not a future upgrade to make once detection actually starts biting.

Keep reading: Utah Just Passed a Law Targeting VPN Users and What Are Obfuscated Servers? A Plain-English Explainer.