Are VPNs legal in Australia?

A virtual private network (VPN) is a gateway to a number of stellar online activities, such as better online gaming, international streaming content, or just an easy way to block intrusive ads. But is using a VPN illegal or allowed under Australian law?

VPNs are legal in Australia, so the short answer is no it’s not illegal to use a VPN in Australia.

That said, like most software, the things you can do with a VPN aren’t necessarily legal, but that has nothing to do with the legality of using a VPN in the first place in Australia.

Back in 2016, the federal government's Productivity Commission released a draft report that went to so far as to advocate for changing the Australia's Copyright Act to make it clear that using a VPN isn't illegal. As per that report:

At the time of writing, no changes to the legislation around VPNs have been made but it's still something to keep in mind when asking whether yourself if it is illegal to use a VPN in Australia.

Likewise, it is worth being mindful some VPNs do include provisions within their terms of service that may preclude you from doing things like hopping geo-fences. You might be able to get away with doing these activities if those terms aren't strictly enforced though.

Although VPNs are legal in Australia, they aren’t legal to use in every country.

By the numbers, most places don't have any formal legislation explicitly restricting the usage of VPNs. However, a handful of countries including Belarus, China, Iraq, North Korea, Oman, Russia and the United Arab Emirates have regulated or banned the use of VPNs. Even in those places though, there are situations where VPNs are allowed for certain services or through certain state-approved providers.

The main reason to use a VPN is to protect your privacy online. While we won’t go into what a VPN is and why you need one, the main thing to understand is that a VPN protects your identity online by changing your internet protocol (IP) address from the one given to your internet connection by your provider to one that’s part of any number of servers offered by a VPN service.

Realistically, though, any legitimate thing you can do online can be used in conjunction with a VPN.

There are as many great reasons to use a VPN as there are great VPN services, which is why we’ve made a round-up of the best VPN services. VPNs are great for maintain internet privacy, regardless of what you’re doing online. Using servers closest to your location can help keep speeds relatively fast, too.

VPNs should absolutely be used whenever you’re connecting to public WiFi to help protect your device, and they’re a great way in general to avoid third parties tracking your online goings-on. They can also be used to access geoblocked content. Just be sure to check the terms and conditions of a service before attempting to use a VPN to unlock geoblocked content.

For gamers, the right VPN service and servers can be used to lower latency. Surfshark, for instance, lets you spoof your GPS location, which is handy for games like Pokémon Go. Outside of play, VPNs are great tools for securely accessing your home network while out and about or for accessing work or university networks.