For years now, people have been using free proxies that you can find online – UK, US and German proxy online servers are the most popular but the demand is wide. It’s not always the smartest move as many of these are simply hacked or mis-configured and using them without permission leaves anyone open to legal action. Even then, some of them are used to actively sniff your traffic with the intention of stealing usernames, account names and passwords for identity theft or plundering your accounts.
However despite these huge security risks, people still use them in their millions every day for accessing content that is restricted to specific countries. Just for example say you a German national who happens to be living or working say just over the border in France. You might get annoyed to find that many of the web sites you normally visited are blocked because of your location. Yes, at the moment the European dream of unrestricted movement doesn’t really extend to the digital realm. Your location determines a huge amount of what you can access online, including often important stuff like online banking.
It’s something that happens all the time, my friend was moaning last week searching for a VPN for Switzerland as he needed to pay a bill but was a few miles over the border. I can tell you it’s much easier finding a US proxy than a VPN for Switzerland at least for a reasonable price.
The solution is relatively well know, simply route your connection through a proxy server located in the correct country. So our friend would need to bounce his connection through a Swiss server or a German proxy in order access German only web sites and services. A crazy situation which is compounded when you have to find the proxy in a specific country in order to access a site.
It’s no wonder people look for free solutions, these blocks and filters are artificial and have literally been implemented to restrict our access. Many may argue that they’re merely enforcing copyright restrictions ! However how can it be right for a German to be denied access to his national TV stations simply because he’s working in another country briefly, after all what century are we living in. The free proxy lists, especially those which allow you to filter results by country seem a tempting quick fix to get a German IP address or a US one or whatever. However it’s important to remember that a huge proportion of these free proxy servers are completely unmanaged or even put there to ‘steal your data’ or credentials. Whether it’s directly by scanning your traffic or by injecting malware onto your computer these free proxies represent a huge risk to your data.
German proxy online or a UK One – You Choose
You may find the terms proxy servers and VPNs used in a sort of interchangeable way in many web pages. This is because they are actually very similar, the main difference with a VPN is that connection is encrypted between the client and the VPN server. Most proxy service companies will offer this facility but often you can turn it off when required – e.g when streaming video.
Nevertheless, most of us will need the ability occasionally to change your IP address to another country. Indeed the more you travel, the more often it’s likely to happen. When I worked away from home I literally used a VPN service every single day whether to access home sites or just to watch the TV in my home country. There is a safe way to get access to a service which allows you to switch your IP address at will, whether you need a Germany proxy or a proxy service from somewhere else like the United States or United Kingdom.
Here’s one in action, a proxy service called Identity Cloaker which hides your real IP address and lets you choose whichever one you need. The subscription gives you access to a network of highly secure anonymous proxies which you can select at will. Choose the IP addresses you need, then disconnect when you’ve finished. You can use whichever proxy servers you need, if you want just to protect your connection then pick a server near to you. So for example a German user could just select a Germany proxy in order to encrypt their data, hide their location but not change it.
Isn’t it crazy? Yet it happens to people all over the world in thousands of different situations being discriminated and filtered simply based on their physical location when they connect. You see the internet is becoming increasingly filtered and blocked and it’s largely all about IP addresses. If you connect from a Germany IP address range, then you’ll be able to access everything in Germany but will be blocked from loads of other sites. Now if you travel abroad, and no longer have a German internet address then you’ll get blocked from all those sites, although you’ll be able to access new ones.
However if you want to access German TV or banking sites it’s extremely inconvenient that suddenly you can’t access these as you are not connecting from a German IP address range. This is why the simple proxy server has became so popular, because when you use one then it’s the proxy server address that’s important not your own. A traveler could then switch between proxy servers as required, to access sites from home they’d simply use a German proxy server, or whichever country needed.
Unfortunately now, free proxies will be pretty much pointless as there’s a growing trend to block access whilst connected to a proxy server. Proxies, even the well configured secure ones can usually be detected by the website you visit. Many sites usually turned a blind eye, for example you could get access to BBC iPlayer with any old crappy proxy for many years. This is beginning to change and now they rarely work as sites actively block the use of proxies to connect to their sites, yep including the BBC.
What you now need is a VPN and a well configured one too, at the moment for example this is the only way to access something like Netflix when you’re outside one of the countries they broadcast too. If you need access to a specific country then make sure you get access to a server in that country – i’e a German proxy online if you want access to a German media sites. A few years ago these were actually quite hard to find, my first was via a Switzerland VPN which was actually registered as a German proxy and IP address.
Even this can be difficult with some companies who are trying to block even VPN access. This is not straight forward and takes quite a lot of resources, but Netflix seems to be doing this. Although they can’t determine the actual presence of a VPN connection they can make an educated guess based on the number of connections being established on specific IP address ranges. These can then be put into a static blocked list which can be banned from accessing the websites – it’s probably very expensive to do especially as the VPN service providers will usually then change their addresses in response.
If you need a VPN/ proxy service which can switch your Netflix account unfortunately there’s not very many. The most popular one is called Nord VPN and they currently support the US version of Netflix. Sometimes other countries will work but it’s not always reliable, click the link above for their latest deals.