It's the first US state to explicitly target VPN use with its age check legislation. Age verification is an especially hot topic in the US right now. A California law will go into effect next year that requires operating systems to verify the user's age at account setup and the "Parents Decide Act" may introduce similar requirements to the entire nation. There are well-documented concerns from experts about the form age verification is taking right now, but put those aside for a moment, because Utah has some ideas of its own on how to tackle all this. Enter Senate Bill 73, the state's Online Age Verification Amendments legislature. It goes into effect May 6, and will make Utah the first US state with age verification laws that specifically target VPN use. Websites with "a substantial portion of material harmful to minors" will be required to check users' ages, and the site is still on the hook if users get around it with a VPN. "An individual is considered to be accessing the website from this state if the individual is actually located in the state, regardless of whether the individual is using a virtual private network," the bill reads, going on to state that affected websites also can't give instructions on how to use a VPN. If you've used a VPN before, the problem with this probably seems obvious: this software is specifically designed to obfuscate your location. In a statement shared with TechRadar, NordVPN said reliably identifying and blocking Utah-based VPN users trying to bypass age verification would be "technically impossible" and creates a "liability trap" for affected businesses. 2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter N