A federal age-verification bill is about to get its first real test in the US Senate, and it is the first one to write proxy traffic into the statute itself. The SCREEN Act, S.737, is scheduled for an executive session of the Senate Commerce Committee on 5 August 2026. Its text would require covered platforms to run identity-based age checks on users, and it names IP addresses, including proxy network addresses, as something those checks must cover.
What the SCREEN Act actually requires
The bill was introduced on 26 February 2025 by Senator Mike Lee, joined by Senators Curtis and Banks, and referred to the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Starting one year after enactment, a covered platform would have to adopt a technology verification measure that determines whether a user is a minor and blocks minors from content deemed harmful to minors. The bill closes the easy exit explicitly: "requiring a user to confirm that the user is not a minor shall not be sufficient". A checkbox is not compliance. Platforms would also have to publish the verification process they use, and the Federal Trade Commission would run regular audits and issue guidance within 180 days of enactment.
The VPN provision, in the bill's own words
The clause that matters for anyone reading this site is paragraph (4) of the verification requirements. Covered platforms must:
"Subject the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, including known virtual proxy network IP addresses, of all users of a covered platform to the technology verification measure described in paragraph (1) unless the covered platform determines based on available technology that a user is not located within the United States."
Two things are worth noticing. The first is the direction of the default: everyone gets checked unless the platform can establish the user is outside the United States, which turns an ambiguous connection into a verified one rather than an exempt one. The second is the wording. The bill says "virtual proxy network", not the standard term virtual private network. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reads the provision as requiring age verification on traffic from known VPN addresses, and that is the practical reading, but the phrase itself is not a term of art, and a platform trying to comply will be guessing at its edges.
Why this reaches far beyond adult sites
A covered platform is any interactive computer service that, in the regular course of its business, creates, hosts or makes available content that meets the bill's harmful-to-minors definition, with the objective of earning a profit. The definition then adds that this applies regardless of whether the entity actually earns a profit on it and regardless of whether such content is the entity's sole source of income or principal business. That last clause is the whole argument. EFF points out the practical consequence: mainstream services that host some adult material, naming Netflix, Reddit, Discord and Bluesky, would fall inside the perimeter alongside dedicated adult sites.
The data problem the bill does not solve
Age verification creates a pile of identity data, and the bill's safeguards are thin. Platforms must take "reasonable" data security steps and keep verification data no longer than reasonably necessary, with no fixed retention ceiling and no meaningful limits on what may be collected. Third parties may run the checks, though liability stays with the platform. There is a rule of construction saying nothing requires platforms to hand user-identifying data to the FTC, which is a real limit on the regulator and no limit at all on the vendors that would end up holding scans of driving licences. EFF's objection is the one that has followed every one of these laws: millions of adults would surrender anonymity to reach lawful speech, and the resulting databases become the next breach headline.
Where it stands and what happens next
The 5 August session is a markup, not a floor vote. Committee approval would send the bill to the full Senate and nothing more, but it is the first meaningful signal of whether the SCREEN Act has the votes to move. It lands on top of a patchwork of state laws that is already producing whiplash: we covered the operator of Pornhub asking Virginia to repeal its own age-verification statute days ago, and New York finalising age checks for social media before that. Every state that has switched such a law on has produced the same measurable reaction, a jump in VPN sign-ups within days, which is the behaviour paragraph (4) appears designed to anticipate.
