The VPN Ban Is Coming: Here's What You Stand to Lose

Right now, roughly 1.8 billion people around the world use VPNs. That is one out of every three internet users. They use them to watch sports, stream movies, work remotely, protect their privacy, and access services they already pay for while traveling abroad.

And governments want to take that away.

This is not a hypothetical threat. It is happening right now. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has issued guidance warning against personal VPN use. The UK government is calling VPNs "a loophole that needs closing." State legislatures in Wisconsin and Michigan are advancing bills that would force websites to block VPN users entirely.

The internet you know is about to change. And most people have no idea what they are about to lose.

The Warning Signs Are Here

In late 2025, CISA released a best practices document that sent shockwaves through the privacy community. The guidance was blunt: "Do not use a personal virtual private network (VPN). Personal VPNs simply shift residual risks from the internet service provider (ISP) to the VPN provider, often increasing the attack surface."

That is the U.S. government telling you that the tool you use to protect your privacy is a liability. Never mind that VPNs have been recommended by security experts for decades. Never mind that millions of remote workers depend on them daily. The official position is now clear: VPNs are a problem.

Meanwhile, in the UK, officials are not even pretending to be subtle. After demand for VPNs surged following new internet regulations, government officials stated they would look "very closely" at VPN usage. One official called VPNs "a loophole that needs closing."

In Wisconsin, Assembly Bill 105 and Senate Bill 130 are advancing through the legislature. These bills would require websites to implement age verification systems and actively block VPN users. If you connect through a VPN, you would be denied access. Not because you are doing anything wrong. Simply because you value your privacy.

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns: vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers. Journalists use them to protect their sources. Activists use them to organize without government surveillance. These laws would strip those protections away.

What You Actually Use Your VPN For

Let us be honest about why 1.8 billion people use VPNs. It is not because they are hiding something sinister. It is because the modern internet has become a surveillance machine, and VPNs are one of the few tools that give ordinary people some control over their digital lives.

Watching the Game You Paid For

Sports blackout restrictions are a perfect example of why VPNs matter. If you pay for a streaming service to watch NFL, NBA, NHL, or MLB games, you might assume you can actually watch those games. You would be wrong.

Broadcasting agreements mean that "local" games are frequently blacked out on streaming platforms. Live in the wrong city? You cannot watch your own team play, even though you are paying for the service. The solution for millions of fans has been simple: use a VPN to appear as if you are in a different location.

Under VPN ban proposals, that workaround disappears. You would be forced to either miss the game or purchase expensive cable packages. All because broadcasting rights matter more than consumer rights.

Accessing Your Streaming Library

Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Amazon Prime. You pay for these services. But if you travel abroad for business or vacation, large portions of your library simply vanish. Content licensing means that the shows available in the U.S. are different from what is available in the UK, Germany, or Japan.

VPNs let you access the content you already pay for, regardless of where you happen to be sleeping that night. Without them, your paid subscription becomes a partial subscription the moment you cross a border.

Working Securely on Public WiFi

Business travelers know the drill. Hotel WiFi. Airport WiFi. Coffee shop WiFi. Every one of these networks is a potential security nightmare. Man-in-the-middle attacks, packet sniffing, rogue access points. The risks are real and well documented.

VPNs encrypt your traffic so that even on a compromised network, your data remains protected. For remote workers handling sensitive corporate information, VPNs are not optional. They are essential.

Banning or restricting VPNs would force millions of remote workers to either accept significant security risks or stop working remotely altogether.

Protecting Your Privacy from Your ISP

Here is something most people do not realize: since 2017, U.S. internet service providers have been legally allowed to collect and sell your browsing history to advertisers without your consent. Every website you visit, every search you make, every link you click. Your ISP can monetize all of it.

VPNs stop this. When you use a VPN, your ISP can see that you are sending encrypted traffic to a VPN server. They cannot see what you are actually doing. Your browsing history stays private.

If VPNs are banned or restricted, that protection evaporates. Your ISP goes back to having a complete record of everything you do online. And they can sell it to the highest bidder.

Banking and Services While Traveling

Try logging into your bank account from a foreign country. Many financial institutions will immediately flag your account for suspicious activity. Some will lock you out entirely until you can verify your identity through a lengthy process.

VPNs let travelers appear to be at home, avoiding these security flags and maintaining access to essential services. Without them, a two-week vacation could mean two weeks without access to your own money.

The Countries Leading the Charge

VPN restrictions are not new. Authoritarian regimes have been blocking VPNs for years. What is new is that Western democracies are now joining the club.

China has the most sophisticated VPN blocking infrastructure in the world. The Great Firewall actively detects and blocks VPN connections. Using a VPN to access blocked services is technically illegal, though enforcement varies.

Russia has banned "unapproved" VPN services and requires VPN providers to register with the government and comply with content blocking requests. Non-compliant services are blocked.

The UAE prohibits using VPNs to commit a crime or prevent discovery of a crime, with penalties including fines up to $545,000 and imprisonment. The definition of "crime" includes accessing blocked VoIP services.

North Korea bans VPNs entirely. No surprise there.

The concerning trend is that these restrictions are no longer limited to countries we typically associate with internet censorship. The UK, U.S., and other Western nations are now exploring similar measures. The justifications differ, but the result is the same: less freedom for users.

Your Streaming Library Is About to Shrink

Let us talk specifics about what you stand to lose in the streaming world.

ESPN+ is only available in the United States. If you are a subscriber traveling abroad, too bad. Your subscription becomes worthless the moment you leave the country. VPNs let you maintain access. Without them, you are paying for a service you cannot use.

Netflix content varies dramatically by region. The U.S. library has different content than the UK library, which has different content than the Japanese library. Licensing agreements carve up content by geography. VPNs let you access the content you want, not just the content available in your current location.

Sports blackouts affect millions of fans every season. The NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB all have complex broadcasting agreements that black out "local" games on streaming services. The irony is brutal: fans who pay for streaming services often cannot watch their favorite teams play.

VPN ban legislation would not just inconvenience users. It would fundamentally break the value proposition of streaming services for anyone who travels or lives in a blackout zone.

The Privacy You Are About to Lose

Privacy is not just for people with something to hide. It is a fundamental right that enables everything from free speech to personal safety.

Your ISP tracks everything. Every website you visit. Every search you make. Every article you read. Since 2017, U.S. ISPs have been legally permitted to sell this data to advertisers. Your browsing history is a product, and you are not the customer.

Advertisers build detailed profiles. The data your ISP collects does not stay with your ISP. It flows to data brokers, advertisers, and anyone willing to pay. These profiles can include your health concerns, political views, financial situation, and personal relationships.

Government surveillance becomes easier. When VPNs are restricted, monitoring internet activity becomes trivial. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies can request data from ISPs with minimal oversight. VPNs create a barrier that forces accountability.

The argument that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" misses the point entirely. Privacy is not about hiding wrongdoing. It is about maintaining autonomy and dignity in a world where every click is potentially monetized or monitored.

The People Who Need VPNs Most

Beyond convenience and privacy, VPNs are genuinely life-saving tools for some of the most vulnerable people in society.

Domestic Abuse Survivors

When someone is fleeing an abusive partner, their digital trail can be deadly. Abusers monitor email, track location data, and use technology to stalk their victims. VPNs help survivors hide their location and online activity from their abusers.

Banning or restricting VPNs would strip away a critical protection for people whose physical safety depends on digital privacy.

Journalists and Their Sources

Press freedom depends on source protection. Whistleblowers and sources who expose corruption, abuse, and wrongdoing put themselves at tremendous risk. VPNs help journalists communicate securely with sources and protect sensitive information.

Organizations like NordVPN offer emergency VPN services specifically for journalists facing "extensive online censorship, targeted surveillance, or the threat of violence." If VPNs are banned, this lifeline disappears.

Activists and Organizers

Political organizing requires secure communication. Activists working on controversial issues know their communications may be monitored. VPNs provide a layer of protection that enables free association and speech.

History shows that governments do not always use surveillance responsibly. Civil rights movements, labor organizers, and political dissidents have all been targets of government monitoring. VPNs are one tool that helps level the playing field.

Researchers and Academics

Universities provide VPN access to students and faculty for good reason. Research databases, academic journals, and course materials are often geographically restricted. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's WiscVPN, for example, enables access to resources that would otherwise be unavailable off-campus or abroad.

VPN restrictions could cripple academic research and limit educational opportunities for students and scholars worldwide.

What Happens When VPNs Are Gone

The proposals being advanced do not just restrict VPNs. They create a surveillance infrastructure that puts everyone at risk.

Under bills like Wisconsin's A.B. 105, websites would be required to verify user identity. That means submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites. Think about that for a moment. Every website you visit could require you to prove who you are.

Data breaches become catastrophic. We have already seen age verification companies get hacked. When every website has your government ID on file, a single breach could expose your complete online activity linked to your real identity.

Anonymous speech disappears. The internet has enabled whistleblowing, political organizing, and free expression precisely because of anonymity. Remove that, and the chilling effect on speech is immediate.

Corporate surveillance accelerates. If you cannot hide behind a VPN, your complete browsing history becomes accessible to advertisers, data brokers, and anyone else willing to pay.

The EFF puts it bluntly: "Age verification laws themselves are the problem. They do not work, they violate privacy, they are trivially easy to circumvent." The same logic applies to VPN bans. They will not achieve their stated goals, but they will create massive collateral damage.

The Numbers Do Not Lie

VPN usage is not fringe behavior. It is mainstream.

• 1.7-1.8 billion people use VPNs worldwide. That is roughly one-third of all internet users.
• 827% growth in U.S. VPN demand in 2025 alone, according to Top10VPN.
• Cross-border content demand and frequent business travel continue to push adoption higher.
• Remote work has made VPNs essential for millions of workers who need secure access to corporate resources.

These are not criminals. These are ordinary people trying to watch their favorite shows, protect their privacy, work securely, and access services they already pay for. Banning VPNs would not stop bad actors who have technical sophistication. It would only hurt regular users who rely on simple, accessible tools.

What You Can Do

The fight for internet freedom is not over. But it requires action.

Stay informed. Follow organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that track legislation affecting digital rights. Know when bills are advancing and who is supporting them.

Contact your representatives. Legislators respond to constituent pressure. If you care about VPN access and internet freedom, let your elected officials know. Many lawmakers supporting these bills simply do not understand the consequences.

Support digital rights organizations. Groups like the EFF, ACLU, and others are actively fighting VPN bans and surveillance legislation. They need resources to continue the fight.

Explore alternatives. VPNs are not the only tool for protecting privacy. Browser isolation, encrypted communications, and other technologies can provide layered protection that does not depend on a single tool that might be banned.

The Alternative: Browser-Level Protection

While VPN bans threaten one layer of protection, forward-thinking security approaches are moving beyond VPNs entirely.

Browser isolation technology, like what Legba provides, operates at a different level than VPNs. Instead of encrypting your connection to hide your traffic, browser isolation executes web content in a separate, ephemeral environment. The threats never reach your device in the first place.

This approach addresses the 60% of breaches that originate in browsers. It provides protection that VPNs never could. VPNs encrypt traffic but cannot stop malicious code from executing in your browser. Isolation can.

The point is not that browser isolation replaces VPNs. They serve different purposes. But as governments restrict VPN access, having multiple layers of protection becomes essential. No single tool should be your only line of defense.

The internet is changing. The tools we rely on are under attack. Building resilient, multi-layered protection is no longer optional. It is necessary.

The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

VPN bans are not about security. They are about control. Control over what you can access. Control over what you can watch. Control over who knows what you do online.

1.8 billion people use VPNs because the internet, left unprotected, is a surveillance machine. ISPs sell your data. Advertisers track your every move. Content is carved up by geography. And increasingly, governments want to monitor everything you do.

VPNs are one tool that gives ordinary people some control back. Taking that tool away does not make the internet safer. It just makes it less free.

The warning signs are here. The legislation is advancing. The question is whether enough people will pay attention before it is too late.

Your streaming library. Your privacy. Your ability to work securely. Your freedom to browse without surveillance. All of it is on the line.

The VPN ban is coming. The only question is what you are going to do about it.