THE Government’s Online Safety Bill could leave adult web surfers open to blackmail, an expert has warned.

Matthew Lesh, head of public policy at the Institute for Economic Affairs, said that features designed to protect people might backfire.

He told GB News: “[There are] so many core privacy threats, the very notion that in order to access the majority of the pornographic material, you have to identify yourself to the site – that is risking creating a massive honeypot, a huge risk of a database of these people’s adult viewing habits added to their identity.”

He made the comments in an interview with Tom Harwood on GB News this morning (17 March).

Lesh added that the legislation may prompt users to try to circumvent the new rules by using a Virtual Private Connection (VPN) and could cause mass blocking of websites for all users.

He said: “It’s going to encourage people, of course, to use a VPN as a trick to try to get around it.

“It could lead to blocking on scale, overseas websites that choose not to comply with the UK’s quite authoritarian rules.

“We don’t exactly know how this is going to come out in practice and the Government’s been very vague about this.

“In order to use basically any site, any platform, but let’s say Google, that Google wants to show you things that might not necessarily be appropriate for someone under the age of 18, Google Search might need to make you log in and verify your identity as well so they know what content is appropriate to show you…”

Lesh said the Government seems to be making the same mistakes made in the past.

“This has been done before, the Government tried to put in place the porn laws a few years ago, they ended up cancelling them and reversing the legislation.”