Which "British research firm" labels them a loophole?

The paper is from the European Parliament Research Service, which is an in-house EU Parliament service. And the "briefing" they published has a section titled "A loop hole that needs closing" that starts "Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well". The words "Some argue" are a hyperlink to a South African news article / opinion piece by some random journalist who writes in a slightly snarky way about VPNs allowing people to bypass the Online Safety Act.

So the TomsHardware article is nonsense - it's an EU briefing paper which seems to think a random south african opinion piece counts as "research". No British research firm, and in fact no real research at all - just crap layerd on crap and making it's way into a crap briefing paper. If this is the quality of the information been given to MEPs, EU citizens should be worried.

Links:

• The briefing paper: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/782618/EPRS_ATA(2026)782618_EN.pdf
• The linked article that is being called "research": https://htxt.co.za/2025/08/the-uk-seems-to-have-just-realised-that-vpns-are-a-loophole-in-age-verification-measures/