Hulu blocks VPN users

People from around the world can watch YouTube for free since it is available for all. However, video streaming services such as Hulu, Netflix and a few too many, are restricting the availability of their services to either their country or to certain regions.

This did not stop netizens from getting around this firewalling and accessing the services. The streaming websites usually monitor the incoming traffic and find out from IP addresses, whether they are from the country or from outside. This helps them restrict the service to outsiders. However, using a proxy or VPN server, you can anonymise your Internet presence and virtually change your IP address to mimic another one from another country. This is basically tunneling your connection through the Internet and originating from another country.

For example, if you use a service such as Hotspot Shield, Tor or a proxy server/website, you are actually using the Internet connection of the service you are connected to. So if your VPN service is hosted in US, then your IP address is shown as originating from US itself. Hence, when you connect to Hulu or Netflix, the streaming server thinks you are connected from US itself (because of the US-based IP address) and allows you in.

However, Hulu has found this issue to hit its revenue and hence is now banning all famous VPN and known proxy services around the world. So if you are using one of the newer proxy or VPN services, which are not famous, there are chances that you can get around the Hulu blocking.