Do you know what geo-blocking is? If you like binging TV shows and movies, stay tuned to learn how you can watch your favorite episodes much earlier than your area may allow.
Blocked content
You have a Netflix account and you want to watch content your friend from another country recommended, but you just can’t find it.
-Are you sure it’s on Netflix?
-Of course, I’m not crazy! Hurry up, I’m already at the end of the season!
-But I can’t find it…
Or, even more dreadful, you search for content and you get a notification: ‘This content is unavailable in your region. Now, everything makes sense – you’ve stumbled on a Geo-block.
A geo-block is a feature on the Internet that bans certain content in specific regions (read countries) because of copyright legislation, intellectual property, or other mumbo-jumbo. This includes not only videos, movies, and TV shows. Geo-block can restrict access to whole websites as well as influence prices on some websites. It goes like this – some countries have it cheaper than others. It happened to us – we wanted to buy a book, and we realized our friend from another country bought it for $5 less than us!
How does Geo-Blocking work?
Geo-block functions on a simple principle native to the Internet. Every computer or phone that’s on the web has its IP address. With the IP address, the Internet communicates with your device.
Every IP address is unique, and with every request, the device makes on the Internet (request for data, with every click or tap), it sends its IP address so that the server knows where to send the requested data.
An IP address also has information about the physical location. So, every time you connect to the Internet, almost every website out there that’s not HTML can know where you are.
Governments and companies utilize the IP address system to ban whole regions from some websites or content on websites and online services, like Amazon, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Netflix, even YouTube, and many more.
What happens if you use a VPN?
According to privacyonline, a VPN (a virtual private network) is the number one way to avoid these geo-blocks and unlock unlimited content potential utilizing the IP address dedicated to another country.
A VPN is an app that changes the way you communicate with the Internet. Instead of just hooking your device onto the web, a VPN makes the whole web your private network. With this in mind, it also provides you with a virtual IP address. Here, things get interesting.
An IP address depends on the location of the device. So, to provide you with a virtual IP address, a VPN first has to choose the location where your device is at. And it can choose ANY location in the world! Do you see where this is going?[adsense]
When you use a VPN, you can CHOOSE a place from which you will virtually connect to the internet. It can be the country in which the new season of your favorite show is already running!
Conclusion
Geo-blocking can be a nuisance and can make you wait for your favorite TV shows. A Netflix VPN goes around the restrictions by connecting you to the internet through a server that is a region that doesn’t have the same restrictions. If we stumble upon a restriction through that region, we can simply change our connection to another region. This way we can always be up to date with new content from all around the world! This amazing feature won’t have us waiting!
