How do I mask my location while traveling so I can use geo blocked services? [closed]

I live in Canada and have a Netflix subscription that works fine for me. This week I'm in Poland and today I launched my Netflix client to show someone a show I thought they would like. To my great surprise, I was told Netflix was not available in my region. Bummer.

On this trip, there has been no time for TV anyway. But I imagine I might want it on a future trip. Using remote desktop to access a machine at home and watch something doesn't seem like a good workaround - we don't have that kind of outbound bandwidth for one thing. So how is this done?

internet

Best Answer

The short answer is, you can't. If you're in Poland, you'll be connecting to the Internet through an IP address known to correspond to Poland, and this is what services what Netflix use to geolocate where you are and block accordingly.

What you can do, though, is proxy your traffic: you send it all over to another machine in your target country, in this case Canada, and that machine forwards it. Netflix then sees the traffic as coming from Canada, and lets you in.

The best solution is a private proxy, eg. a desktop machine you've left running at home (which you obviously have to set up and test before you leave!), or a corporate VPN. There are also a whole bunch of companies that will sell you access to their proxies. Last and least, there are also some completely free proxies out there, but these tend to be overloaded, slow, and they often get banned by websites since people use them for various nefarious things. Since all there change all the time, here's a semi-randomly chosen website that covers all four options and how to find out more about each.

Regardless of what option you choose, it will slow down your Net access considerably and make most sorts of streaming impossible, since everything has to be sent over a long-distance connection. Usually, if you connect to Netflix, it will already have cached all the content nearby so it's fast to get, but if Netflix thinks you're in Canada, it's going to serve you your videos from a cache in Canada, not the one that would be fastest for Poland.

As for copyright & legality issues, I'm not a lawyer & Travel.SE does not provide legal advice yadda yadda, but the long and short of it is that as a paying Canadian subscriber of Netflix Canada, Kate is perfectly authorized to view content on Netflix Canada. Now it may well be against Netflix's contract with the copyright holders to allow such content to be streamed and/or cached overseas, but that's not really her problem, nor is it "illegal", only a breach of contract. Here's an interesting article on the topic (h/t Flimzy) by a law professor, but note that it's talking about subscribing under a false address, so much of it does not apply in this case.

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How do you bypass geo fence restrictions?

Luckily, there's an easy way to get around geo-blocking: connect to a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPNs work by routing your traffic through a server in another country. This hides your real IP address \u2014 which is often used to determine your location \u2014 and replaces it with a temporary, country-specific IP address.

How do I bypass geo restrictions without VPN?

Here are three easy ways.

Use SmartDNS. SmartDNS is a great option for those looking to solely bypass geo-blocking without additional security features. ...

Use The Tor Browser. You may have heard of the Tor browser before. ...

Use A Proxy Server.

Can I use a VPN to fake my location?

Fortunately, a VPN lets you fake your location, providing you with access to otherwise restricted content. This means if you travel abroad you can still connect to your usual home streaming services, websites and apps. A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, offers a number of benefits.

Can a VPN block geolocation?

Yes, a VPN hides your phone location while you're using your mobile browsing app. Some other apps use GPS to discover your location, though. Only a few VPNs, like Surfshark, can change your GPS location.

How to disable location tracking in Android

Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Samson Katt, Samson Katt, Samson Katt, Rosivan Morais