That is an exceptionally broad statement. I think it's probable that Netflix doesn't work with large-scale VPN providers because it's broadly easy to identify the traffic source. However, using a wireguard tunnel from my ipad back to my house, netflix works fine.

He obviously didn't mean to include people who are just tunneling back to their residential IP.

There’s many ways Netflix could detect VPN use, especially on mobile devices.

It’s not obvious at all. Netflix could be doing something as simple as checking the IPs or could be actually checking the use of VPN at a system level. Both are equally valid readings of the GP comment.

seems like torrenting is still easier (and safer) than using netflix and co

I was suspended by Disney+ for accidentally turning on my VPN to a location they didn't like...I instantly cancelled my subscription. I couldn't believe the suspension message, banned a paying user... Never again.

What location was that, out of curiosity, and what was the reason given?

especially if you're on arm linux, it seems

I find this "easier" argument amusing.

Any solution that requires me to reach behind my TV and plug in my laptop is already not easy.

With Netflix you just punch your password into your smart TV and you're watching content.

i can stream torrents from my phone to tv without hassle

You don't have to, I can use my Android TV to stream torrents in a Netflix-like GUI using public torrents. My father uses it and he's not very "techy".

It even syncs progress across devices, works on all my devices (doesn't work in the Apple ecosystem).

Would you mind sharing the software you’re using?

iirc they also use the TTL of the request to see if it differs from others on the same IP. This was a while ago however.

What about a VPN that tunnels relevant traffic (i.e. usually the one to their backend API and/or DRM key/licensing server, not to their CDN) through residential connections in the same geography as the VPN relay?

If Netflix can see that your traffic is coming out of an AWS datacenter, then yeah they'll block it.

If Nord VPN is really bouncing your traffic out of some other residential customer's connection, that would be a lot harder to detect. And a lot more ethically questionable if the other user doesn't realize they're doing it.

But if the VPN provider really was routing other customers traffic through your internet… you’d know it. You’d see requests and traffic that you didn’t make going across your router. Since you’d be the endpoint for the other dudes VPN you could probably even see what IPs they are connecting to and get an idea about the nature of their requests.

I dunno if SSL encrypts the entire HTTP payload or not but could you even figure out the URL’s being requested using a tool like wireshark?

Full URLs: Definitely not. Path and query parameters are part of the HTTP payload, i.e. encrypted within HTTPS.

Host names: Very likely, unless you're using SNI.

You mean eSNI, SNI is the field containing the hostname and eSNI stands for "encrypted SNI"

Right, thanks!

I keep thinking the "e" is for "enhanced" encryption, i.e. "eSNI 2.0", but what I'm thinking of is actually called ECH (for "encrypted client hello"): https://blog.cloudflare.com/encrypted-client-hello/

If such a feature exists (and I have no idea if it does) I assume they would only route traffic to known streaming services through it. Otherwise you're making random customers into exit nodes for potentially criminal traffic, which could go very badly.

No? I've used Netflix with NordVPN like 2 years ago and since then switched to ProtonVPN, which works as well...

Using VPNs for Streaming is selling point #1 for tons of people.

It fully depends on whether the IP address associated with your VPN tunnel has tripped their automated detection systems or managed to land on a public blacklist like Project Honeypot. But they do actively track and block VPN traffic.

Ah, that's probably the case, true. Never had it happen to me but that's very anecdotal.

While working at Netflix this was a real bummer.

I had whole home VPN configured and I couldn't access NFLX streaming content from the house. Getting Netflix traffic to bypass the VPN is incredibly difficult without hacking the client side code to have it update the bypass rules on-demand in response to the client side JSON payloads - or hook into DNS resolution and do VPN bypassing there based on a regeular expression of the origin and the returned records.

The way NFLX works under the hood, from the client's perspective, is that it makes an initial request to a service hosted in AWS. That service stitches together the list-of-lists on the home page. Then you select a film to watch, it again reaches out to a service hosted in AWS to ask to stream the content. This is really straightforward to get working with whole home VPN, you just bypass the VPN for those origins (using DNS queries to get the IP blocks) and you are golden. A little cron job could keep that IP bypass list fresh and it worked well enough to get through the UI.

But then the AWS service responds with a list of streams you are licensed to watch and URLs that point to their location. Those URLs point to Netflix's OpenConnect CDN hosts. Nearly every time I went to stream, I'd pull a different origin for the content and that would route back through the VPN. The list wasn't stable, so I couldn't compile a comprehensive list of origins to route around the VPN with.

So NFLX blocks VPNs to protect their licenses, which I understand. But their architecture made it impossible for me to allow their service to bypass my VPN. So any device I wanted/needed to use NFLX on had to have a direct connection to the internet.

Netflix works just fine through VPN - it just limits the offerings. If I disable VPN I additionally get local-to-the-country offerings, on top of the "through VPN" ones.

Netflix does however work with a smart dns spoofer.

Can you give an example please? I'd like to do this.

I use https://www.smartdnsproxy.com/services/netflix/

Never had an issue, been signed up for years.

It’s possible to set up your own solution I believe but I don’t have the time for that currently.

Not affiliated or anything and I’d do your own research on them but I much prefer this as they only see that traffic from me.

I mean, it works just fine; you can watch all Netflix-owned content on NordVPN. You just can't watch any of the stuff they license for local distribution.

Netflix definitely works with NordVPN. My partner and I regularly use it to enable us to stream content which isn’t available in the UK but is elsewhere in the world.

Specifically to watch The Walking Dead if I am honest.

Netflix can be a bit sneaky - there's some content that it won't even show you if you're on VPN, even if the source and destination regions can see it; I use a VPN regularly for other streamers, but netflix I sometimes end up having to turn off my VPN to even find particular shows.