\u00d7<\/p>\n
A few weeks ago, new laws made it necessary for British residents visiting certain websites to provide photo identification of themselves, to verify their age.<\/p>\n
As we recently reported, it\u2019s debatable whether the UK Government\u2019s Online Safety Act will protect children<\/a> or actually drive them into the clutches of less well-regulated online content. <\/p>\n What we can say is that nobody should voluntarily upload personally identifiable information (PII) like passport scans to mysterious overseas website administrators.<\/p>\n The potential for data loss, theft and misuse is difficult to sum up in a sentence, although \u201cvery likely in the long-term\u201d probably covers it.<\/p>\n One potential workaround to the deeply flawed Online Safety Act is a process known as location spoofing.<\/p>\n Below, we explain how this process works, its legality, and other benefits it might bring.<\/p>\n Location location location<\/p>\n Although we think of the internet as a globally accessible resource, elements of it are country-specific \u2013 or even region-specific within individual nations.<\/p>\n As an example, some live BBC content is only available over the internet in certain parts of the country.<\/p>\n Even licence fee payers won\u2019t be able to listen to commentary from an east-coast football match while you\u2019re on the west coast. You\u2019ve paid for it, but you can\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n Similarly, unless their own governments have similar policies, people visiting adult content websites from other countries won\u2019t be subjected to the photo ID demands now levied on UK residents.<\/p>\n Individual locations are identified using a process called geolocation, which relies on the Internet Protocol (IP) address<\/a> your ISP has allocated you.<\/p>\n There are over 140 million IP addresses assigned to the UK, each comprised of four numbers between zero and 255, and separated by full stops.<\/p>\n When you visit a website, it detects where you are using your IP address and adjusts elements like the default language and currency accordingly. <\/p>\n Some sites, apps, resources and services are automatically blocked when people in certain countries attempt to access or view them.<\/p>\n Location spoofing is a process whereby the online identifiers used to determine where people are (and consequently which restrictions apply) are disguised.<\/p>\n