Survey of age assurance circumvention by young people
This sits in the lower-middle of the Research & Development band — a mid-scale opportunity. Based on 20,405 valued Research & Development tenders in our corpus.
In July 2025 the Online Safety Act's Child Safety Duties came into force, requiring online services to implement highly effective age assurance measures to prevent children from accessing harmful or age-inappropriate content.
These duties were a major milestone in the government's approach to improving children's online safety.
Following implementation, Ofcom reported that UK daily active users of virtual private networks (VPN) apps temporarily doubled to around 1.5 million.
Emerging research suggests that this spike in VPN usage was not primarily driven by child users.
We are interested in exploring this further.
Findings will inform government understanding, help shape future interventions and ensure the Act delivers its intended protections for children.
To inform government understanding, we want to explore the impact of circumvention techniques and VPNs further.
To better understand the prevalence and methods of age assurance circumvention among children, including the use of VPNs.
What the supplier must deliver
Online services to implement highly effective age
online services to implement highly effective age assurance measures to prevent children.
Interventions and ensure the Act delivers its
interventions and ensure the Act delivers its intended protections for children.
Derived from the notice text — always confirm against the original documents.
Make the case to bid
Reveal who to approach at DSIT, and generate a go-to-market strategy from their news, accounts and people.
- OCID
- b608a91c-e0a4-423c-bd18-b72837f11cba
- Stage
- contract · Contract
- Source
- Contracts Finder
- Buyer ref
- tender_522088/1561259
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source data © Crown copyright.
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