A couple of years ago it was relatively straight forward to bypass most of the region blocks that existed on the internet. Not many web sites bothered, and those that did could easily be bypassed by using a simple proxy which you could usually find online for nothing. Unfortunately those days have pretty much gone now, the game has changed and region restrictions have become more widespread and sophisticated. It can be tough to keep up as people search through outdated information on websites and forums, only today I got a request asking for help in accessing the Indian IP TV channel – Star Sports. The problem was they were asking for help to find an Indian IP Proxy online to access it.
In the good old days, this would be a perfectly legitimate request but alas no longer. If you’re looking to bypass any sorts of online filters, forget about using proxies they no longer work certainly with any of the major media sites. That’s not to say you can’t bypass them any longer, and indeed millions of people access these media sites outside the origin country – it’s just you have to use slightly different tools. The proxy may be dead but the principle of hiding your real IP address in order to access region locked sites certainly isn’t.
Forget the Indian IP Proxy – You Need an Indian VPN
So just to recap, all these blocks simply work by looking up the country that the IP address you use is registered in. Which is why if you’re logged in from the US you will get blocked at Indian only web sites, this is the message you’ll commonly receive.
The website, in this case Hotstar detects that you are not connecting from India and will block you. It’s exactly the same as all the major media sites which block access from outside their own domestic market.
However although proxies can now be detected automatically, we still are able to use a VPN server. As long as this server is based in the correct location, you can hide your real IP address and access whichever content you like. In the following video we use an Indian VPN server to watch Hotstar in Europe.
As you can see, all you need to do is to connect to the Indian VPN server before accessing the site and everything will work ok. The only IP address that will be visible will be that of the server, which will allow you to bypass any region blocks.
The only problem with using this method for accessing Indian sites is that it’s quite difficult to find a VPN service which has servers based in India within their basic subscription. However there are a couple, the one demonstrated in the video is called Overplay and they’ve been around for many years.
We’ve just found a better service than Overplay if you need an Indian IP proxy and what’s even better there’s a free trial available too. So to access any Indian restricted site or indeed media sites across the world like the BBC iPLayer, Hulu and HBO then try out the link below.
Click to visit the Smart DNS site here.
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