In an age of confirmation of your identity at every corner, I take issue with age verification. This week I’ve been considering how to bypass o2 age verification and if you’re like me and don’t wish to jump through hoops to access simple sites over your mobile network then keep reading as I’ve discovered an easy way to avoid such intrusion.
o2 Age Verification
I don’t use mobile internet on my laptop often and leave it reserved for my phone but on a recent trip to London to attend Spies, Secrets and Lies in an effort to avoid paying for Wi-Fi access on the train I decided to set my mobile device as a Wi-Fi hotspot and use the tethering feature.
4G has made mobile internet so much more accessible, hasn’t it?
If you’ve got access to 4G mobile internet then you’ll know that it isn’t actually half bad. I usually hit speeds of around 10Mbps and with averages of 15Mbps on o2 in the UK there are a lot of services that are now accessible in a mobile environment.
So with my laptop tethered up and the rolling hills of the countryside whizzing past imagine my surprise to find that when heading over to the IPVanish VPN website I was asked to complete age verification.
Now I’m pretty sure a VPN website isn’t adult content nor is it gambling related but due to the fact it most likely falls under the category of a “proxy” site then it is blocked.
No debit cards.
The way to rid yourself of this block is to enter your credit card details with which you’ll then be charged £1 that gets refunded to your phone bill. To make matters worse, they won’t even accept a debit card, so what if you don’t use credit cards?
I hardly want the hassle of getting my credit card out mid journey.
Now that is all very well and good but I don’t really see why I have to do that, after all I’m a subscriber to their service, they have access to my date of birth. If I wasn’t over 18 I probably wouldn’t have even passed a credit check to get the phone in the first place.
So rather than go through that whole rigamarole I fired up the VPN service from IPVanish I have installed on my laptop and once connected simply visited their website. A VPN creates a secure encrypted connection to a third party server located elsewhere meaning o2 can’t determine what websites you’re accessing.
Due to them not knowing what websites you’re accessing it means they can’t force the age verification onto you and as such you’re free to access IPVanish or other VPN provider’s websites or, in fact, any website that o2 determines is 18+ such as adult content or gambling sites.
So not only can the age verification be bypassed so you don’t have to jump through hoops to access simple websites and more importantly avoid going through the trouble of entering your credit card details but in essence the o2 age verification is totally useless as anyone under 18 with access to a VPN service could bypass the block easily anyway.
So grab yourself a VPN and avoid the bureaucracy.
To recap, if you want to avoid being forced to hand over your credit card details, be charged a pound and potentially spill the beans that you want to access adult sites, gambling or anything else they deem you should verify first before being able to access, then don’t, sign up to a VPN provider such as the ones I recommend below or any in our VPN Comparison Guide.
All three providers offer software for PC and Mac and apps for Android and iOS. So not only can you bypass the o2 age verification when using tethering, you can also bypass it directly on your mobile or tablet.
Take a look at the quick example of me bypassing the o2 age verification with ease using the Android app from VPN.ac.
Thanks for teaching my 14 year old this trick so now accessed porn hope your proud of yourself ?
The solution mentioned in the article would require the reader to be 18 because to purchase the app you need to have some kind of payment type available to over 18’s. Ie; Credit / Debit card. It’s also to raise awareness of the fact that adult checks can be easily bypassed and so adult supervision of internet use is a must.
You’re not your.
Most teenage boys watch porn. its not new. Be glad he’s not out f****g girls, and getting them pregnant. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you now look like a dumb *****. Go **** a donkey and let your kid have a ****. Jeez.
Hey which VPNs are free?
Free VPNs don’t come recommended because they could put your privacy in danger.
Chris, I agree with every word of this. I bought an EE sim at the beginning of July {I had no knowledge that adult content blockers were in place] and I bought the sim in one of their stores. So my first question is why didn’t the member of staff sell me the sim without disabling the content blocker ? I was born in 1960, so believe me, I do not look like a teenager. Once I found that I could not access any Danni Ashe sites I quickly discovered what was going on, and prepared myself for the next visit. Once again I went in person to one of their stores armed with my bloody passport. The female member of staff said it was obvious that I wasn’t under 18 years of age, and I asked her to remove the blocker. But of course she didn’t, so I don’t see how I can do it. I’m trying to find a customer services website so that I can complain to EE, although I’m not hopeful of success.
Hi Simon,
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences. It’s strange they wouldn’t help you remove the block in store. The EE website says “call 1818 from the EE device you want to remove or apply Content Lock”. So this may help you get it removed.