Over the years of its service, Netflix has become the biggest TV streaming provider today. Now expanding its reaches across 190 countries, the company is a name that is easily recognized in the industry. However, some countries are still unable to enjoy the streaming giant's service, leaving its citizens to resort to proxies, Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other workarounds. Netflix sees this as a problem and as such will block them in the coming weeks.
The company announced Thursday through its official blog that it will be taking its steps further to stop users from accessing content that's exclusively outside their own country. Subscribers have been resorting to using several proxies and VPNs for them to be able to watch content that isn't available locally. And it has gained popularity among tech-savvy users, and it has opened up access for content that shouldn't be available in their respective regions.
'If all of our content were globally available, there wouldn't be a reason for members to use proxies or unblockers,' wrote Netflix Vice President of Content Delivery Architecture David Fullagar in a blog post. Netflix will be cracking down on proxies, unblockers and such in the coming weeks.
Netflix, however, isn't going into details about its new methods for detecting proxies or VPNs. Nevertheless, reports suggest that it could be a simple blocking IP address process that is associated with known services, similar to how anonymous-centric Tor is sometimes blocked. Typically home routers are assigned with a default IP address range of 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.0.255. Now, should any user in the future experience interruptions of some sort whenever they watch on Netflix using a workaround, it would be a clear indication that the streaming giant will then have succeeded in implementing its rule.
The news comes a week after the video streaming giant went up in more than 130 countries. While the company has gone almost entirely global, its services still aren't able to reach China.
