Netflix to clamp down on VPN users

Thomas McMullan Read more January 14, 2016

Netflix has promised to make things difficult for viewers that use proxy servers to access content from other countries. In a blog post titled “Evolving Proxy Detection as a Global Service”, vice president of content delivery architecture David Fullagar claimed that the next few weeks would see the rollout of new measures targeting VPNs.

“In coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are,” wrote Fullagar. “We’re confident this change won’t impact members not using proxies.”

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The company doesn’t give any information on how it intends to block VPNs, although this could simply be a matter of blocking IP addresses tied to proxy servers. Elsewhere in the post, Fullagar acknowledged that proxy servers wouldn’t be necessary if the content was available globally:

“Over time, we anticipate being able to do so,” he wrote. “For now, given the historic practice of licensing content by geographic territories, the TV shows and movies we offer differ, to varying degrees, by territory. In the meantime, we will continue to respect and enforce content licensing by geographic location.”