If you love watching movies and TV shows, geo-blocking and regional content libraries must frustrate you to no end. Geo-blocking means that a specific web page, content piece, or website is unavailable for access outside a particular demographic.
This is why you aren’t able to access some of the shows and movies you’ve been keeping your fingers crossed for even though you have subscriptions to the platforms they are hosted on.
Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime all have different regional libraries for people living in those regions. This means that your cousin lives in another country, and you might not have access to the same shows and movies. There can be many reasons for this, but the most common one is licensing.
The problem of geo-blocking is frustrating, but it is easier to solve than many people think. All you need is a subscription to a VPN for streaming.
How a VPN helps you bypass geo-blocks
VPNs are popular cybersecurity tools. So, how do they help one bypass geo-blocks and access TV shows and movies blocked in their countries? Let us explain.
Geo-blocking is carried out based on IP addresses. Every device has an IP address, visible when you’re trying to visit a website. This IP address contains country information analyzed by website servers before you are granted or denied access.
To unblock a web page blocked in a specific region, you need an IP address of a machine that lies outside that region to make the website server believe you’re a citizen of another country.
This is exactly what a VPN does. A VPN connects you to the internet through a remote and secure server. This process also hides your original IP address while temporarily replacing it with the IP address of your server. Once that is done, you will appear to the online framework as a citizen of the country your server is placed in, hence unblocking websites and web pages previously blocked for you.
Step by step process of using a VPN to unblock shows and movies
Got a bunch of shows and movies you wish to unblock using a VPN? Here is a simple four-step process that you can follow.
- Sign up for a reputed VPN provider
- Download and install the right app for your device (many high-quality VPNs offer different apps for different devices. This is in an attempt to cater to the unique security requirements better)
- When you’ve downloaded the application, go ahead and connect through a remote and secure server.
- Time to test your VPN! Load up a blocked website, if it opens up, you’re good! Enjoy your favorite TV shows and movies any time you want to.
Now that you know how to unblock top shows and movies and watch them even if they aren’t accessible in your country at the moment let’s talk about some of the other ways you can use your VPN subscription
Some other ways you can use your VPN subscription
As discussed before, VPNs are cybersecurity tools. One of the best ways to use your subscription is to ensure online safety.
Your IP address is visible to hundreds of different third parties like websites, subscription platforms, and product companies every second you’re online.
If any of these online frameworks gets compromised or hacked into, your IP address can land into the hands of criminals, who can then use it to get into your devices and hijack your privacy.
With news of companies getting hacked and coping with damages worth millions of dollars, this is not a risk worth taking. Using a VPN to secure your online parameter is the logical next addition to the online best practices handbook.
Another way you can use your VPN subscription is to stream and game smoothly, without glitches. Surprised? It’s not all that surprising when you think about it.
VPNs make you virtually anonymous online, which means that you’re also anonymous to your local internet service provider. Anonymity to your ISP means that they can’t throttle your bandwidth anymore hence you can enjoy seamless streaming and uninterrupted at any time of the month.
Final word
A VPN is not only a great security tool, but the anonymity a VPN tool offers has several other unmatched benefits. If you’ve decided to subscribe to a VPN to unblock movies shows and secure your online presence, fill us in on which one you’ve chosen to go with!
If there are other topics you want to read about, let us know in the comments below, and we’ll be more than happy to help you out.