- Mandatory age verification lands in Missouri on November 30, 2025
- All sites that contain 33% of “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 have to prove they are over 18 to access adult-only content online.
Missouri is the latest of the US states to pass its form of age verification law. It is set to fuel the discussion about data protection and security risks associated with age-proofing methods, which will most likely provoke another surge in the use of the best VPN apps.
Under the new rules, any website or application that contains more than one-third “material harmful to minors” must verify that their users are adults before giving them access. A provision that experts speaking to TechRadar have criticized for its “vague” wording.
Violations of the rule are considered “an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent or otherwise illegal practice” under Missouri law, with online services facing up to $10,000 a day for noncompliance.
Instead, these adult online websites and services may perform age verification checks using digital ID, other government-issued identification documents, or other transaction data.
Crucially, mobile operating systems with at least 10 million devices in the US must provide digital age verification “that a website or application can use to comply” with the rules.
How Missouri Age Verification Can Affect Your Privacy
Missouri law requires website and app providers to use all reasonable methods to secure user data, along with an obligation not to retain any identifying information unless otherwise required by law enforcement. However, experts do not believe that these security measures can be a real guarantee against data misuse or leaks.
“By forcing everyone to hand over their most valuable and sensitive identity data, the law builds a dangerous new surveillance infrastructure instead of actually keeping young people safe,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) activist Molly Buckley told TechRadar.
After all, in the UK we saw firsthand how easy it was for sensitive age verification information to be compromised when Discord’s third-party service was hacked and leaked over 70,000 public ID photos used to verify user age.
According to Internet Society Senior Policy and Advocacy Expert John Perrino, the Missouri law is mostly a “copy-paste version” of key provisions included in similar legislation elsewhere in the country. This means that the same risks of greater surveillance, censorship and accessibility apply.
What’s new here is that the likes of Google and Apple will have to provide a secure digital ID tool that websites can use for age verification. The problem? Big Tech giants aren’t exactly up for it, with these digital ID features still limited to driver’s licenses and airport passport control.
“Even if this is the most secure thing on your phone, will people feel comfortable storing and sharing their driver’s license or passport to access restricted apps and websites? Even the mere perception of an invasion of privacy drives people to less secure corners of the internet,” Perrino told TechRadar.
If you’re among those people worried about the prospect of compromising your ID privacy, now is the best time to secure your digital life with a reliable solution. Most VPN providers have already dropped their prices with Black Friday VPN deals, including TechRadar’s top-rated service, NordVPN. Here’s everything you need to know:
We test and review VPN services for legitimate recreational use. For example: 1. Accessing a Service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that Service). 2. Protecting your online security and enhancing your online privacy when you are abroad. We do not support or condone the use of a VPN service to break the law or carry out illegal activities. Consumption of paid pirated content is neither endorsed nor endorsed by Future Publishing.
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