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Wire · regulatory

Over half of children experience 'harmful' content online

Published

15 July 2026

Topic

regulatory

Sectors

Cybersecurity

Geography

United Kingdom

Source

Read at holyrood.com

Verified

Fusion42 · 15 July 2026 · Fusion42 review

UK government research shows over half of children have accessed harmful content online despite the Online Safety Act's July 2025 age verification requirements; nearly two in five children surveyed have successfully circumvented age checks, primarily through false identity claims and VPNs.

This Wire brief sits within Fusion42's coverage of Cybersecurity.

◆ The Wire takeaway

If you build age verification or content filtering, the UK's real-world data just proved your baseline assumption wrong: no technical measure stops determined users, and VPN adoption is your actual problem, not tick boxes. Ofcom is escalating enforcement, but fines won't fix the gap—you're selling into a regulation that's already failing its own test.

Coverage

1 source · 15 Jul 2026

Related on Wire

Topics

Cybersecurityage-verificationonline-safety-actregulatory-enforcementchild-protectionvpn-circumvention