- Mandatory age verification comes to Missouri on November 30, 2025
- All websites containing 33% “material harmful to minors” must comply
- Missouri is the latest US state to enforce age verification rules
Starting November 30, 2025, people in Missouri will need to prove they are 18 or older to access adult-only content online.
Missouri is the last of the US states to enact its form of age verification law. It is set to further fuel the debate over data privacy and security risks related to age control methods, which will likely lead to a new surge in the use of the best VPN apps.
Under the new rules, all websites or apps that contain more than a third of “material harmful to minors” must verify that their users are adults before granting them access. A provision that experts who spoke to TechRadar criticized for its “vague” terms.
Violations of the rule are considered “an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or unlawful practice” under Missouri law, and online services face up to $10,000 per day for noncompliance.
Instead, these adult sites and online services may perform age verifications using a digital ID, other government-issued identification documents, or other transactional data.
Crucially, mobile operating systems with at least 10 million devices in the US must provide digital age verification “that a website or app can use to comply” with the rules.
How Missouri Age Verification Could Affect Your Privacy
Missouri law requires website and app providers to use all reasonable methods to protect user data, along with a requirement not to retain any identifying information unless otherwise required by law enforcement authorities. However, experts do not believe that these safeguards can be a real guarantee against data abuse or leaks.
“By forcing everyone to hand over their most valuable and sensitive identity data, the law is building a dangerous new surveillance infrastructure instead of keeping young people safe,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activist Molly Buckley told TechRadar.
After all, in the UK, we saw first-hand how easy it was for sensitive age verification information to be compromised when the third-party service Discord was hacked, leaking over 70,000 government ID photos used to verify users’ ages.
According to John Perrino, senior policy and advocacy expert at the Internet Society, Missouri’s law is primarily a “copy-and-paste version” of major provisions included in similar legislation elsewhere in the country. This means that the same risks of increased surveillance, censorship and accessibility apply.
What’s new here is that companies like Google and Apple will need to provide a secure digital identification tool that websites can use to verify age. The problem? The Big Tech giants aren’t exactly ready for that, as these digital ID features are still limited to driver’s licenses and passport checks at airports.
“Even if this is the most secure thing on your phone, will people feel comfortable saving and sharing their driver’s license or passport to access restricted apps and websites? Even the mere perception of a privacy intrusion drives people to less secure corners of the Internet,” Perrino told TechRadar.
If you are among those concerned about the possibility of compromising the confidentiality of your ID, now is the best time to protect your digital life with a reliable solution. Most VPN providers have already lowered their prices with Black Friday VPN deals, including TechRadar’s top-rated service, NordVPN. This is all you need to know:
We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Access a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protect your online security and strengthen your online privacy when you are abroad. We do not support or condone using a VPN service to break the law or conduct illegal activities. Future Publishing does not endorse or approve the consumption of paid pirated content.
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