Internet Privacy

BBC Iplayer Overseas – How it’s Done

Everywhere you look online there are ‘solutions’ to the problem of watching BBC iPlayer overseas. There are proxies, VPNs for sale on hundreds of web sites promising a solution to watching British TV online.  However do they really solve that rather annoying block you get when you try and connect to iPlayer when outside the UK.  Or indeed that disappointment when you try and watch ITV player abroad too! The solutions have changed over the years and unfortunately now none of the methods to watch UK tv abroad free work anymore.  However there are still some options – so how do you choose which is the best one?

Well first the reason you can’t connect, which is basically due to your IP address. When you connect to BBC Iplayer – the application does a simple look up to see where your IP address is registered. If it’s in the UK it lets you in, anywhere else then you get redirected to a polite message saying that you can’t connect.

What Happens when you watch BBC Iplayer Overseas

So you’ll be informed that you can’t watch BBC Iplayer but you can listen to BBC Radio.  It’s called geotargeting and it is happening more and more on the internet.  Of course it’s great when Google uses it to make sure that you get local results for your search for a plumber, but on the whole it’s used to block access to stuff.   You see websites like to control what they charge in different places – the market in USA might support one price but they can charge much more in the UK.  It’s online price discrimination and personally I find it rather annoying.

How to Watch BBC iPlayer Overseas

So anyway all these firms supply proxies and VPNs based in various countries across the world.  These are servers which you can use to relay your requests to any website you like, the advantage is that you ‘adopt’ the IP address of the server.  So if the proxy is in the UK then you’ll have a British IP address and so you can watch UK TV or sites you need, including BBC iPlayer.

It’s not rocket science – so how should you choose between these companies – well here’s my little list of things to check.

What countries are available ?

Now you might only be interested in watching the latest Dr Who series on BBC Iplayer or maybe the BBC News Live online – so you just need a UK server.  However I’d advise looking at the companies who supply you access to lots of servers in different countries.  For instance if you have access to the US, France or Canada then you can access lots of websites with all the latest shows by using the right country server.   Check that you get access to  a few countries included in your subscription.

Prices of Subscription

Don’t pay a lot, the prices seem to have come down quite a bit with the increased competition.  You should definitely not be paying more than 10 Euros/14 dollars a month  for a UK proxy service and the very most and that would be for a large selection of different servers.  There are a few floating around that charge much more particularly if you want a dedicated IP address which you don’t need to watch most online media.  Be very careful of the free ones, they either don’t work and install nasty adware on your computer or are just so slow are unusable.

VPN or Proxy?

There are two type of service available one is a proxy server which you simply connect to via software or by configuring a manual connection or a VPN (Virtual private network).  In practical terms for watching TV all you need to know is what works for which channels.  The BBC used to work with either of these, but now will only work with few of the VPN services.  A proxy is pretty much useless now because the majority of media companies block them automatically.  Which is a shame as this removed the final possibility that you can watch BBC iPlayer abroad free using a simple proxy.

It must be a VPN now, for example most of the US channels like Hulu require a VPN to connect with.  Mainly this is due to a VPN being much  harder to detect.  It’s advisable all things being equal to choose either a service that provides both just in case unless you know that you definitely only want to access the BBC Iplayer.  Make sure the service is adaptable, you don’t need complicated software.  In fact, the facility to set up the VPN manually adds a lot of flexibility meaning you can use it on other devices and watch UK TV abroad on ipad, smartphones and media streamers.

A quality and secure VPN should work with pretty much any media service in the world as long as the server is based in the right country.   You should be able to watch anything in the UK with a British server, you can watch Sky Go abroad if you have a valid subscription too.

Anyway I hope that helps clarify some points – there are lots of great services out there with fast, well run servers so by all means shop around.  I actually use the Identity Cloaker as although it’s not advertised as a way of watching BBC iplayer or bypassing these blocks it works perfectly.  It has both modes VPN and proxy and has servers in about a dozen countries including UK, US, Canada and Australia to name a few.  It also has easy to use software so that you don’t have to set up the connection like you do with a lot of the other services.  It’s also primarily a security software which keeps your connection safe but the added advantage is that it won’t get pursued by legal departments like all the other firms who advertise as TV VPN/proxy services.   It’s also one of the cheapest!

Anyway you can try the trial version for 10 days to watch BBC iPlayer overseas for just a few bucks – ..

So what’s in my internet log files?

It’s a fair question that anyone who wants to protect their privacy should be asking. What’s in my Internet Log files and who can access them? Well I’m afraid, and you’re not going to like this, is just about everything you do online is stored in logs files.

In fact even just the phrase internet log files is confusing as there are so many of them.   Let’s focus on the main ones which contain the most information about you online and that’s the ISP logs.

You see when you connect to the internet every thing you do is routed through your ISP, they have a complete record of everything you do pretty much. One of the main problems is that we use HTTP to surf the internet, that’s Hyper Text Transport Protocol – which has helped the internet to develop so amazingly fast.

There is a problem with HTTP though, and that is because it is in completely clear text. So anyone who has access to this data like the ISP can instantly read it and see exactly what and where you go on the internet.

It’s why Governments and organisations access this information when searching for terrorists, criminals and even just people who downloaded materials under copyright.  It’s all there in the internet log files stored at your local ISP.  There’s no technical knowledge needed to learn how to view .log files as the vast majority of it’s in clear text with no encryption.  It’a all recorded at that central point simply because all your data has to go through an ISP, which is recorded and saved to the .log file extension of their choice.

Internet Log files

Who Has the Right to Access My Internet Log Files ?

You might argue that any law abiding individual has nothing to fear from having their online activity recorded.  After all normal citizens shouldn’t care even if they are engaged in a little anonymous torrenting to download a few films, that’s nothing to the Government is it? However just consider how much information there actually is stored there in those log files.  Everything web site you visit, every video you watch, every message you send or receive it’s all there in your log files.   Would you be happy to hand over a comprehensive list of everything you’ve done online?   It’s a huge intrusion to your privacy, imagine a step further one made likely by the Governments latest piece of snooping legislation – the Investigatory Powers Act.  It’s been passed in Parliament but hasn’t got Royal Assent yet, but it’s likely to become law in the near future.  It would mean a whole host of Government agencies have access to these records for a variety of reasons.

Imagine you’re sitting in an interview for a Government job?  Across the table the interviewer sits with a booklet containing every web site you’ve visited in the last 12 months.  How would that make you feel?  Does this feel like an open, democratic situation or something like the KGB or Stasi would have done?   Perhaps you have medical conditions, something about your health or sexuality, perhaps private political affiliations.  All this is likely to be known from anyone’s web history and hence the person sitting across from you with your internet log files.

Even if this information was restricted to a select few agencies, we know this would spread.  The data once out would get into more and more hands, usually under some pretext of criminality or preventing terrorism.

The solution is actually quite simple but it does require some effort – encryption.  If you use a VPN service, you can encrypt your connection so that your logs contain no useful information. Here’s one in action –

The only information accessible in your logs as long as you keep encryption enabled will be the time you are online and the IP address of the VPN server you’re connected to. there will be no other data that is legible as it will all be encrypted and no record of the web servers you visit as all requests will be channeled through the VPN server. The added benefit of this is that you can also use the VPN service to bypass the myriad internet blocks that exist online.

For example, you may have found that certain sites particularly media companies block access based on your location. It’s called region locking or geo-targeting and it’s becoming increasingly common. For example if you try and access your Hulu subscription from outside the US you’ll get blocked, or similarly if you try and watch the BBC iPlayer from outside the UK. However if you switch to a VPN server in the correct country you can bypass these blocks irrespective of your location. I use mine every single day when travelling to watch the BBC News when I’m travelling.