Pornhub announces 77% decrease in UK users but people still using loophole to get around checks

Pornhub has revealed that there has been a sharp fall in the number of UK users accessing adult material on the site.

It comes after age-related restrictions were introduced under the Online Safety Act earlier this year, in an attempt to safeguard children and young people from viewing explicit content.

However, people have since found various 'loopholes' to still be able to access the content they want without signing up, validating their ID and registering as the site requests.

Pornhub said there's been a 77 percent drop in the number of UK visitors compared to July. However, the actual figure may be different because some are using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which masks their location.

According to the BBC, Google searches for the X-rated website have dropped by almost 50 percent.

It's believed that some have switched to using a VPN in an attempt to 'hide their identity' (Getty Stock Image)

While it could possibly mean people have reduced their consumption of adult material, it's more likely that many are using these so-called loopholes - something the government and Pornhub have both addressed - or are using different platforms which didn't fall under the legislation.

The new rules required users to prove they are over the age of 18, with the controversial method of facial recognition being one of them.

Ofcom claims that the number of people visiting adult websites was slashed by almost a third since the restrictions came into place back on 25 July.

It said this was a sign that the new restrictions were working to prevent children from accidentally coming 'across porn without searching for it'.

"Our new rules end the era of an age-blind internet, when many sites and apps have undertaken no meaningful checks to see if children were using their services," the regulator said.

In the first few days and weeks of the rules being brought in, Ofcom told the BBC the number of people using a VPN spiked to 1.5 million daily.

It now says this has reduced to one million a day.

The restrictions came in place earlier this year to prevent young people from accessing explicit content (Getty Stock Image)

According to TechRadar, there have also been 10.7 million downloads of VPN apps in the UK over 2025.

Cybernews researcher Aras Nazarovas said: "After age checks kicked in, VPN apps jumped to the top of the UK App Store, and at least one provider saw a 1,800% surge in downloads."

He credits a large part of the 'missing' UK audience to the VPN usage, saying it's 'being reclassified as non‑UK traffic'.

Elsewhere, Dr Hanne Stegeman, from the University of Exeter, told the BBC: "It is likely that people not wanting to verify their age or identity to access sexual content, for example because of privacy concerns, are using VPNs to get around this."

She agreed that VPN use is the likely culprit behind the shrinking figures, rather than people actually changing their ways.

"As the location of website visitors are usually determined through IP addresses, it could be that those figures are inaccurate when a portion of visitors are using VPNs," Dr Stegeman added.