How to get benefit of a VPN?

P

patfert1

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For business reasons I recently purchased VPN access (ProtonVPN) to give me an online presence in a small European country, one not served by the free VPN services, for a few weeks to conclude some business transactions online. I got a very large discount as a new subscriber, 2 year subscription, but now, having fulfilled it's original purpose, I don't know what to do with it. And 23 months remaining.

I understand the general benefits of a VPN - security, anonymity, watch foreign streaming services, etc. But I can't identify a useful "use case" for me at the moment.

At first I thought I could use it to watch the BBC iPlayer but discovered that one needs a UK tv license too - and even then it might not work if the BBC recognise the IP address as a VPN.

Any suggestions?
 
If the 30 day get your money back is up, then you will just have to pay the € 4.50 per month for the next 23 months

Why didn't you just buy the € 9.99 per month service ?
 
patfert1 said:
For business reasons I recently purchased VPN access (ProtonVPN) to give me an online presence in a small European country, one not served by the free VPN services, for a few weeks to conclude some business transactions online. I got a very large discount as a new subscriber, 2 year subscription, but now, having fulfilled it's original purpose, I don't know what to do with it. And 23 months remaining.

I understand the general benefits of a VPN - security, anonymity, watch foreign streaming services, etc. But I can't identify a useful "use case" for me at the moment.

At first I thought I could use it to watch the BBC iPlayer but discovered that one needs a UK tv license too - and even then it might not work if the BBC recognise the IP address as a VPN.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
I have no issue watching BBC iPlayer, ITV players, Channel 4 etc. on my VPN without a UK tv license.
 
jpd said:
If the 30 day get your money back is up, then you will just have to pay the € 4.50 per month for the next 23 months

Why didn't you just buy the € 9.99 per month service ?
Click to expand...
In hindsight I agree, but it was cheap at slightly under 80 Eur total for 2 years and I expected to find uses for it.
 
Flybytheseat said:
I have no issue watching BBC iPlayer, ITV players, Channel 4 etc. on my VPN without a UK tv license.
Click to expand...
I couldn't get it to work despite trying any suggestions I could find online. TV licence doesn't seem to be a real issue. Rather, I suspect the BBC is very active at identifying and blocking IP addresses associated with VPN providers. Which VPN do you use?
 
patfert1 said:
I couldn't get it to work despite trying any suggestions I could find online. TV licence doesn't seem to be a real issue. Rather, I suspect the BBC is very active at identifying and blocking IP addresses associated with VPN providers. Which VPN do you use?
Click to expand...
Nord VPN works fine for me. Sometimes I'll need to change the UK server to get it to work but mostly works first time.
 
I've also used Nord VPN with the iplayer.

The trick that works for me is to clear all bbc.co.uk domain cookies that might have been created while the VPN was inactive (i.e. by requests appearing to come from a browser client outside the UK).

In Google Chrome browser, you can do this by:
- Go to bbc.co.uk/iplayer.
- Click to the left of the URL where the hover message is "View site information"
- Click "Cookies and site data"
- Click "Manage on-device site data"
- Click on the "bin" symbol beside each bbc.co.uk cookie to delete

When the VPN is active, try going to bbc.co.uk/iplayer again.
 
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