6d ago

Does anyone use a VPN to subvert the Netflix household device fencing?

AFAICT, if a Netflix account owner sets up a VPN for their household, then anyone sharing the account who routes their Netflix traffic through that VPN would appear to be accessing Netflix from that household's WAN IP address.

Is anyone doing this? Is it really that simple or are there more challenges?

EDIT: We get it, you like torrenting. Let's keep comments on topic folks.

73 comments

No, but I use a VPN to download movies from various sites. No reason to pay for Netflix.
- This is the way.
- I have a media server, but I still need Netflix to handle the volume of crap shows my partner watches*
  *many actually play in the background while she does something else, but apparently they're necessary
  
  Why not just use something like rutracker.org ?
  All the netflix releases are on there and vast majority of them can be streamed via bit torrent. Just select language defaults in your media player and you're good to go.
  
  many actually play in the background while she does something else, but apparently they’re necessary
  Tangent, but I really wish shows could be tagged as second screen. I'm sick of starting something and realizing 20 minutes in that it's designed and written to be passively listened to rather than actual entertainment
  It's insulting to be treated like a moron by a show because they assume you won't be paying attention while watching
  
  are you me? is this my alt account and we've got a carbon monoxide situation going on?
  
  It's sad that you're dunking on your partner like this. Sounds like she has ADHD or similar tendencies and needs something in the background to help her concentrate on tasks. Shows that don't need your full attention work best for this. I know because I'm the same.
I do live at 3 locations in 2 countries for work reasons and have a wireguard VPN server at my primary home that acts as a gateway for all my traffic, not only because of streaming but also because my bank locked me out for suspicious behavior before. The routers at locations 2 and 3 are sending all their traffic to my primary home.
No issues with this setup, I can only recommend it. I also have a centralized NAS this way and all my home assistant instances are interconnected.
- What hardware do you use to avoid slowdowns?
  
  I have 10 GBit Fiber :)
- In terms of bank, I recommend switching to one that won't block you for travelling, like Revolut
  
  Revolut effectively blocked me for using custom ROMs on my phones. Fuck them.
Not using vpn but using mail filter fwd. Mails from netflix with codes are fwd to all using the shared account. So if you need to reactivate a device you request a device code and get it in the mail.
- Smart, thanks for the interesting idea.
- If you even get the option for the code. For some reason my TV will never do it.
Tail scale, wire guard, open VPN all work
They see your traffic coming from a residential ISP and don't give it a second thought.
That said, if their service is that bad, piracy's not a bad option. If someone's going to provide me a service that I have to pay for and then tighten down the screws until let's no longer reasonable, why should I care about following their rules?
- @rumba @tatterdemalion if the app/device is collecting location and sending various other data then they'll be feeding that into their decision making
  
  Netflix has no GPS permissions. What various other data are you referring to?
EDIT: We get it, you like torrenting. Let's keep comments on topic folks.
To be fair, you posted in the self-hosted community discussing an Issue for proprietary software.
To answer your question, which others have already done, yes your VPN tunnel will share the same IP as your household so long as it’s setup properly.
- An issue which I aim to resolve using a self-hosted VPN.
- Just a stupid question - Is self-hosting (and this forum) only applies to open source products?
  
  This is just my opinion but nope, not at all. There's plenty of proprietary self-host software. Plex is self-host software and it gets talked about here despite being proprietary.
If you pay for something to not abide by it's rules, why do it?
It's a messed up logic I really do not understand.
Arr!
- I pay for Spotify for several reasons :
  Unlike Netflix & co. for movies/shows, the catalog size is satisfying on Spotify & co. for music ;
  Remote playback and volume control over Internet (branded "Connect") ;
  Contributing to creator revenue.
  Voice assistant compatibility ;
  Yet, I use a family subscription, which I share with strangers, because Spotify increase their prices often, and my wallet doesn't like that.
  Fun fact : when Spotify realizes someone's doing that and prevents new people from joining (which only happens when people join and leave a lot), creating a new account with a new family subscription (even with the same IP address, home address, username and bank card) and moving everyone to it works fine.
- I pay for the streaming services to fund the development and production of the shows I enjoy watching.
  I torrent the content for my convenience.
  It’s a classic “tragedy of the commons” scenario. I ask myself what would happen if nobody paid and everybody pirated.
  No shade if that’s your choice, just recognize that you’re relying on all the people who do pay to keep the system going.
  
  what would happen if nobody paid and everybody pirated
  they wouldn't just slowly starve to death you know. they'd start making the price more competitive and the service more user-friendly before they'd even had to pawn a single Porsche.
  
  I see it differently. The service (as in content and delivery) should make me want to pay.
  I'm all for paying the creators.
Yes it works. It really is that simple!
Why go through the hassle?
Set up Jellyfin and use your VPN to fill it with whatever you’re wanting to pay corporate overlords for.
You’ve paid for the IP already from the years of subscriptions. At this point they’re just draining everyone dry. Stop letting them.
- Seems like the user is setting up a local VPN. Kinda weird that term now seems to mean a corporate VPN run with someone else's servers.
I guess it should work, but your internet connection becomes the bottleneck. Make sure you have enough bandwidth, outbound as well, to have several people watching the same time
Yes, that works just fine. Wen my daughter was at her boyfriend's place she used a wireguard tunnel to my house to use Netflix.
I did something similar to this before because I live in a different country from my home country and it’s not a problem if you host your own VPN in your own home, but if you use a commercial VPN service, the IP address may be flagged
Yeah.
I considered setting up a Pi for WireGuard at my mom's house (her router doesn't support VPN), so we could share subscriptions still, but decided it wasn't worth the hassle and risk that they would start VPN detecting from the client: could just imagine them sending her emails about it that would confuse her lol
no, but i do use a VPN to torrent whatever few movies worth watching that they shovel out
- Yarhar and all that
Tell them to use a free streaming site. Here's one of the best: https://hydrahd.io/
Stop working harder for the businesses taking your money.
I do this, it’s been one with other providers but I don’t use Netflix.
I've done this. I have a Google TV Stick. If Netflix starts preventing people from opening their app when it detects a VPN (in Android), then you can do what I did and run the VPN on the routers themselves. In my case it's ASUS routers on both ends, and they support Wireguard natively (GliNet are also really good for this as they support and run OpenWrt)
The benefit to doing it this way is that neither Netflix nor the Google TV itself are aware they're on a VPN. The ASUS routers I use have a feature called VPN Fusion, where you can put different clients on or off of different VPN connections.
Edit: To clarify, I share with family. I'm not the account owner, but I'm one of the profiles in the account.
- Every wifi device we own that's connected to wifi and the Internet can be precisely located by the companies involved even when using a VPN.
  If you have an Android phone you've probably noticed a prompt at some point asking for your permission to transmit precise location information and enable wifi scanning. Those wifi SSIDs and MAC addresses along with its GPS location is sent back to Google. The combination of all that information is almost as unique as a fingerprint. They can use that along with signal strength of each AP in the area to determine your device's location with precision. (Google used to allow apps like Maps to be used with wifi scanning turned off, but no more.)
  Your Google stick can't tell it's on a VPN directly, but even without GPS Google can still pinpoint its physical location using their database of SSIDs and MAC addresses, and if they want to they can determine you're using a VPN by comparing that to the expected location of your IP address. There probably aren't enough people doing this right now to make it worth the trouble to detect your VPN, but IMO it's just a matter of time before they decide it is.
  I also expect that Google sells that information to every company willing to pay for it, so almost every single wifi enabled device can be precisely located if it can transmit data to the Internet.
  We live in a scary time.
  
  Interesting info. I switched to grapheneos recently, which allows you to disable a lot of that stuff. Combining that with WG, should make a solid way to share
Netflix's restrictions are not based on IP address. That would be an incredibly unreliable way of determining a location
They're looking at the network you're connected to. Exactly what they're looking for is not public
- How can I spoof EVERYTHING to be identical in all locations using my openwrt routers ? Do they look at my GPS data, or the name and addresses of other wifi and bluetooth devices ? Do they check my traceroute between my device and their servers ?
  
  You don't have to spoof everything. If you setup a wireguard server on your router then, then VPN into that then you'll be on the actual network and Netflix cannot tell the difference.
  Netflix has come out and said they don't use GPS. I cannot authoritatively say they don't traceroute or use other signals, but the wireguard tunnel works so you can only assume they do not.
No cause why would anyone pay for Netflix? Everything on there is available for free online.
This never worked for me. It would always detect my VPN and alarm out. Even when I was logged in from my own country. If it was on, I was locked out.
- I think they mean hosting their own VPN on their home network, not using any third party provider.
  
  It still wouldn't work. If the system is set up to deny service when a VPN is detected, then it doesn't matter where you're connected, or if you're hosting or not.
- I use a third party VPN without any issues (USA)

73 comments