Utah's new law is about to make life very difficult for VPN users

Utah will become the first state in the US to target VPN users starting next week, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). It comes three years after the state began implementing age verification to access adult websites, which led to a surge in VPN usage.

Under Senate Bill 73 (SB 73), which was signed by Governor Spencer Cox on March 19, things look like they will get a bit hairy for VPN use thanks to two provisions. Firstly, under the law, an individual is considered to be accessing a website from Utah if they’re physically located there, regardless of any software they use to change their apparent location.

This creates a big liability trap for websites that could push them to simply block all access to VPN users, or mandate age verification for every visitor, no matter where they’re based. The second provision is that commercial entities that host “a substantial portion of material harmful to minors”, will be banned from facilitating or encouraging the use of a VPN to bypass age checks.

The bill doesn’t explicitly ban VPN products, but it could drastically reduce their effectiveness when it comes to bypassing the age checks required by the state to access certain websites.

Discussing the new bill, the EFF said:

“The internet is built to, and will always, route around censorship. If Utah successfully hampers commercial VPN providers, motivated users will transition to non-commercial proxies, private tunnels through cloud services like AWS, or residential proxies that are virtually indistinguishable from standard home traffic. These workarounds will emerge within hours of the law taking effect. Meanwhile, the collateral damage will fall on businesses, journalists, and survivors of abuse who rely on commercial VPNs for essential data security.

These provisions won't stop a tech-savvy teenager, but they certainly will impact the privacy of every regular Utah resident who just wants to keep their data out of the hands of brokers or malicious actors.”

Notably, the Utah Senate is dominated by Republicans, which is interesting, given that their “King” often berates European countries for implementing similar measures aimed at reducing harms against children.