Wisconsin lawmakers have backed away from a controversial idea that would have effectively pressured websites to block visitors using VPNs—a provision critics warned would undermine privacy tools without meaningfully improving online safety.
The change affects Wisconsin Senate Bill 130 (and companion Assembly Bill 105), introduced in March 2025, which would require certain sites to use a “reasonable” method to verify a user’s age before allowing access to content deemed “harmful to minors.” Earlier drafts included language that would have forced covered businesses to prevent access via “a virtual private network system or virtual private network provider,” igniting swift backlash from digital rights advocates and VPN users.
A privacy upgrade that’s easy to understand
If you’re following the VPN debate, a physical security key is another simple way to protect accounts—especially email and social logins—without sharing extra personal data.
Shop FIDO2 security keys on AmazonWhat Wisconsin changed in SB 130
A VPN (virtual private network) routes your internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, masking your IP address and making your connection harder to monitor or track. That privacy feature is precisely why age-gating proposals sometimes target VPNs: they can make it harder for websites to determine where a user is located.
But in Wisconsin’s case, that approach appears to have hit a wall. State Sen. Van Wanggaard moved to delete the VPN provision from SB 130, and reporting indicates the Assembly agreed to remove it as well—meaning VPN services are no longer singled out for liability under the bill.
As of the latest reporting, the bill has moved forward in the legislative process and is being treated as headed to Gov. Tony Evers—but if you’re publishing this as news, it’s worth attributing the final “awaiting signature” status to the reporting unless you’re also linking the official action history page.
Why privacy advocates pushed back
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) praised the reversal, calling it a sign that public pressure worked. Rindala Alajaji, the EFF’s associate director of state affairs, argued that lawmakers heard from users and experts who warned the VPN language wouldn’t function as intended.
In an open letter sent before the change, the EFF said the draft bill didn’t “meaningfully advance” the goal of protecting young people online. The group emphasized that VPNs are used for legitimate, everyday security needs by people and organizations that rely on private connections—everyone from journalists and universities to businesses and ordinary users who want safer browsing on public Wi-Fi.
The core problem: VPN blocking is hard to do without collateral damage
The EFF also attacked the VPN ban idea as fundamentally unworkable. The organization argued that adult sites and other covered platforms can’t reliably determine a VPN user’s true home location—because the user could be connecting through an endpoint in another state or even another country.
That leaves sites with what the EFF describes as a lose-lose decision:
- Block all VPN traffic, cutting off access for huge numbers of legitimate users nationwide, or
- Stop offering the service in Wisconsin, which would be a major operational and legal escalation.
Either way, it becomes less about age verification and more about reshaping the internet’s basic privacy plumbing.
VPNs and age verification: what’s true — and what needs evidence
It’s true that VPNs can be used to bypass geofenced restrictions, including some forms of location-based age verification. But broad claims like “VPN use has increased because of age-verification laws” need a specific study to support them. Without hard data, it’s safer to say the policy tension is intensifying—and that these laws are likely to put VPNs under greater political scrutiny.
Wisconsin isn’t alone: Michigan floated an even tougher approach
Wisconsin’s discarded VPN language isn’t an isolated incident. In Michigan, lawmakers introduced House Bill 4938, sometimes described in coverage as the “Anticorruption of Public Morals Act.” The proposal targets circumvention tools—including VPN-like services—by pushing requirements onto ISPs and proposing steep penalties that reporting says could reach up to $500,000, depending on enforcement.
Whether bills like Michigan’s go anywhere is another question. But the pattern is clear: as more states experiment with age verification, some lawmakers are also exploring ways to close the obvious workarounds—often by aiming directly at privacy tools that millions of people use for reasons that have nothing to do with adult content.
For Wisconsin, at least, the message from critics landed: trying to block VPNs wasn’t just unpopular—it was likely unworkable.