Utah on Wednesday became the first state in the nation to prohibit the use of VPNs to avoid age verification barriers, despite warnings that the legislation could lead to websites banning the use of VPN IP addresses to access their sites.

Senate Bill 73 holds websites liable for people who mask their location while in Utah and effectively treats anyone connected to a Utah VPN as if they were physically in the state for age verification purposes.

The legislation follows similar proposed bills from Wisconsin and Michigan and is seen as the first major US step toward regulating VPN use to avoid age verification. 

However, privacy advocates warn that the legislation could lead to a blanket ban of all VPN addresses in a "technical whack-a-mole that likely no company can win." The Electronic Frontier Federation wrote that "if a website cannot reliably detect a VPN user's true location and the law requires it to do so for all users in a particular state, then the legal risk could push the site to either ban all known VPN IPs, or to mandate age verification for every visitor globally."

The EFF warns that as some governments consider cracking down on VPN use among minors to enforce age verification laws, the public is "entering uncharted territory." "Utah is setting a precedent that prioritizes government control over the fundamental architecture of a private and secure internet, and it won't stop at the state's borders," the group argues.  

In the past year, both Australia and the UK have enacted age verification measures to restrict access to "harmful content." While Australia's legislation has been called an "unmitigated disaster" by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, it's been reported that children in the UK have been drawing on mustaches to get past age barriers.

Representatives for the EFF and the Utah Senate didn't respond to CNET's request for more information.