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Do you happen to know/would you mind explaining how Netflix detects VPN usage? Is it through timing measurements?
by wfunction 10y ago
Do you happen to know/would you mind explaining how Netflix detects VPN usage? Is it through timing measurements?
- Klathmon 10y agoI believe they just keep a list of known VPN IP addresses. (How they get them in the first place I'm not sure). It's a wackamole game for sure, but its annoying enough to be a problem, especially for the less technical. I know I can buy my own VPS and tunnel through that, but now that's another machine I need to maintain, secure, and pay for.
- wfunction 10y agoAhh, that's way less interesting of a mechanism than I thought. Thanks for explaining!
- kogepathic 10y ago> (How they get them in the first place I'm not sure). I don't work for Netflix or Hulu. But why couldn't staff there just sign up for VPN services, log in, note the IP address(es) in use and then block those? Buying a monthly subscription to a few VPN providers seems like a cheap and easy way to solve this. > I know I can buy my own VPS and tunnel through that It would be pretty easy for a provider to block access from a VPS. Data center providers have well known blocks of IP addresses, which are static, and it's pretty unlikely that there are any actually humans in a data center watching Netflix. It would be pretty trivial for Netflix to decide to block certain IP ranges they know to be used by VPS providers to prevent this.
- eknkc 10y agoI installed openvpn on a server. Netflix still managed to block my access so maybe they are checking patterns or something.
- eknkc 10y agoI installed openvpn on a server. Netflix still managed to block my access so maybe they are checking patterns or something.
- superuser2 10y agoIt's also easy to discover and blacklist the IP address ranges of known server providers.