Research by privacy watchdog Open Rights Group describes the data protection in place to protect consumers is “vague, imprecise and largely a ‘tick box’ exercise”.

For those who came in late, in an apparent bit to protect teens from the perils of masturbation the UK government decided to bring in ID checks needed to stop under-18s from visiting pornographic websites and force any commercial provider of online pornography to carry out “robust” checks on their users to ensure they are adults.

The age verification measures will be introduced on 15 July but a recent YouGov poll showed that 76 per cent of the British public is unaware of the ID checks being introduced.

“With one month until rollout, the UK porn block is a privacy timebomb,” the report stated.

Estimates suggest around 20 million adults in the UK say they watch porn, although a considerably larger number would ever admit to it.

Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock said that due to the sensitive nature of age verification data, there needs to be a higher standard of protection than the baseline which is offered by data protection legislation.

“The BBFC’s standard is supposed to deliver this. However, it is a voluntary standard, which offers little information about the level of data protection being offered and provides no means of redress if companies fail to live up to it.”

Killock said the standard was therefore “pointless and misleading.”

Most people are aware that tech-savvy children are going to reaching restricted websites, in the same way, that they got porn mags just a few years ago. When the date for the identity checks was announced in April there was a surge in interest in technology that would allow people to bypass them.

Online searches for virtual private networks (VPNs) tripled in the hours following the government’s announcement that ID checks would be enforced from July.