Utah Becomes First State to Target VPNs in Age-Verification CrackdownAfter months of legal wrangling, Utah's Senate Bill 73, the first US law to explicitly target VPN use in the context of age verification, went into effect today, September 3, 2026.
Utah's SB 73 requires commercial websites that "knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute material harmful to minors" to verify Utah visitors' ages when that material exceeds one-third of their content — even if visitors conceal their location with VPNs or proxies.
Under the law, visitors physically in Utah count as Utah users regardless of whether they use a virtual private network, proxy server, or another tool to disguise their location. VPNs route traffic through remote servers, concealing the IP address a website would otherwise see. The bill also restricts operators from helping visitors bypass age checks, including by providing instructions for accessing their websites through VPNs or evading geographic blocks.@QSIMedia
