NextDNS is a DNS service that is looking to work around ID/age verification by diverting DNS requests to appear as if from another country where iD/age verification is not required. Most internet page reads consist of two steps, first to
use the DNS server to work out eg that melonfarmers.co.uk/ is to be found at say IP address 214.16.66.216. The second stage is to extarct the page data from 214.16.66.216. Now a lot of internet censorship and blocking is implemented at blocking
and diverting the first step of the DNS look up, eg if an ISP wanted to block melonfarmers.co.uk it would return a false page of say 199.109.188.205 which is a page containing a blocked message or more likely a message saying that the site is
unavailable. It is the idea of NextDNS that most websites will do their location checking on the DNS look up rather than the page data request. And so if the DNS server would suggest that the DNS lookup were to be spoofed to appear too be from a
less censorial country then perhaps the website could be fooled into not requiring ID verification, and that subsequent data requests would not be checked for location. This would be cheaper and easier then encrypting and rerouting page data requests as
done by a VPN. Anyone using the free or paid version of NextDNS can already turn this redirection feature on. To do so, users need to log into their account at my.nextdns.io, navigate to the Settings tab, scroll down, and toggle the Bypass Age
Verification option. The company notes that by enabling it, users confirm they are of legal age to access restricted content. The results so far are mixed. The feature remains in beta and does not work reliably across all platforms. Services like
Reddit and X are still blocking some users, even with the setting active. Attempts to view age-restricted YouTube videos have also failed, likely because YouTube requires account sign-ins and has started experimenting with AI-driven age estimation in
the US. Presumably these particular services do check the request location for each page data request. Hopefully the idea works with porn website that are happy to be access ed via spoofed location services |