Netflix has stepped up in its battle against VPN providers!
It is summer. The sun is shining! It is very hot outside, at least in certain parts of the world. A heat record has been set in Sicily in the southern parts of Italy (measuring 48 degrees Celsius). You decide to enter a cold room with air-conditioning and you are ready to watch a movie on Netflix. You start your computer, connect to a VPN server in order to stream your selected movie, but something is wrong! The VPN doesn’t seem to work. Netflix is only showing you their original content, instead of showing the actual content of that given country. If you have experienced something similar, you are living in the aftermath of the 2021 summer crackdown on VPN providers by Netflix.
I have been writing articles about VPN providers and Netflix for almost ten years. Until 2016, you could use any VPN in order to change your country and to watch the content in other countries. Then came 2016, and Netflix expanded to more than 200 countries. In the aftermath of the expansion, they stepped up and blocked lots of VPN providers. It seemed to be very crucial at that time, but after a couple of months, you could quickly see which VPN providers adapted and found solutions, got hold of new servers, and added new IP addresses that weren’t blocked by Netflix. I have written hundreds of articles about those since then.
Since 2016, Netflix has still blocked new IP addresses and VPN providers, but things have happened slowly, and quite a lot of VPN providers have thrived in this period.
Then came the summer of 2021
And now, here we are, not in the summer of 69 (like in the Bryan Adams song), but in the summer of 2021. Netflix has for sure taken some new steps because suddenly almost all VPN providers have been blocked, even those who have worked perfectly for the last 5-6 years.
Not only has Netflix blocked these services, but they have also started to block single IP addresses that they suspect belong to people sharing their IP addresses with others or that they believe are abused in order for people to bypass Netflix geo-blocks. As a result, it has been told off quite a lot of people in the United States who suddenly only ended up seeing the Netflix original content, as their IP addresses were blocked by Netflix.
Netflix also seems to be aware of this and they have told people with such problems to contact their ISP and see if they are able to help.
I have done some testing in the recent days using VPN providers like ExpressVPN, NordVPN, SurfsharkVPN, and others, and based on what I can see, these all seem to suffer greatly due to the recent actions from Netflix.
No pages are up to date at the moment when it comes to which VPN services can be used with Netflix. But, if you want to visit one of the best there is, I can warmly recommend https://netflix.fromabroad.org/
What will the future bring?
I am not really sure about it. I believe with all the skills, talent, and money located within the Netflix empire, that they should be able to easily block 99,5% of all IP addresses used by VPN providers and proxy services. The question is really whether they want to spend time, money, and energy on this.
I am sure that all the VPN providers who have earned big money helping their customers access Netflix content in other countries will fight hard in order to find backdoors and solutions to the problem. Will they succeed? I guess we will know more about this in a couple of months. Until then, I guess we will all have to calm down and either watch some Netflix original content in our own country, or maybe buy a subscription to another streaming service like Paramount+, PeacockTV, or DisneyPlus instead.
Have you had trouble using a VPN to stream Netflix content recently? Or are you using a VPN that is still working? Write a comment and let me know about your experience!
At the time of writing this article, it is time for all the top leagues in Europe to start a new season of football. While waiting for the VPN ban to end on Netflix, why not use your VPN subscription to stream La Liga, Serie A, Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, Bundesliga, and other leagues and tournaments online? Or just use your VPN to stream free content on PeacockTV in the United States? There are lots of options, so you shouldn’t have to be bored while waiting for your favorite VPN to give access to Netflix again.
