When it was launched in 2017, Proton VPN was primarily aimed at professionals looking for a very high level of security and confidentiality. The VPN service has since evolved enormously and developed new features to bypass the geographic restrictions of SVOD services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+.
The advent of video-on-demand services initiated by Netflix has exploded the market for circumvention tools such as free or premium VPNs. The latter were quickly acclaimed by the general public for their ability to circumvent the geographical restrictions of streaming platforms whose catalog is more or less well stocked depending on the country. Access to films, TV series and other documentaries may be contractually limited to specific geographic areas. This is the reason why certain content protected by copyright is, for example, available in the United States and not in France, or vice versa.
To block Internet users who attempt to access content outside the geographic area where they are located, SVOD platforms identify their location via their IP address. By using a VPN, it is in principle possible to bypass these restrictions by replacing your original IP address with that of a VPN server located in the desired region. In use, however, things are not always so simple, because the safeguards put in place by streaming services manage to detect and block connections that pass through a VPN. Only a handful of VPN providers today manage to bypass the geographic restrictions of these services without being detected.
Provided you subscribe to a “Plus” or “Visionary” plan to be able to use the provider’s premium servers, Proton VPN is undoubtedly one of the most effective VPNs for accessing geo-blocked content from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+.
Bypass geographic restrictions
ProtonVPN plays transparent by guaranteeing access to streaming services only to users with a “Plus” or “Visionary” subscription. With the “Free” and “Basic” plans, the provider specifies that SVOD platforms can detect the VPN at any time. To get started, open the ProtonVPN desktop or mobile client (Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, etc.) and enter your credentials to connect to the service. Although ProtonVPN’s infrastructure of 1,680 servers across 63 countries is relatively modest compared to some competitors, the service stands out for its optimization technologies that deliver speeds higher than the average VPN in the world. walk.
The Swiss provider also has the advantage of offering a large number of servers specifically optimized for streaming in the most popular locations such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Australia, etc. Go to the “Country” menu and select the destination of your choice. Then click on the small arrow on the right to expand the list of servers and connect to one of those optimized for streaming (indicated by a circle icon with an arrow inside). Note that not all countries have servers optimized for streaming.
Connect to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney+
Once the VPN connection is established, simply open your SVOD platform on your browser and indicate your identifiers (email address/pseudonym and password) to connect. Thanks to the VPN’s relocated IP address, the streaming service in principle automatically gives you access to content corresponding to the selected country. If this doesn’t work, ProtonVPN recommends the following steps:
- Restart the ProtonVPN app and reconnect the VPN
- Clear internet browser cache
- Use another Internet browser
- Restart the device
ProtonVPN unblocks the catalogs of Neftlix, Amazon Prime Video and even Disney+ without blinking in most countries where they have servers. However, it should be kept in mind that the situation may change, as streaming platforms increase their efforts to improve their VPN blocking technologies. Even the best VPN providers can sometimes find themselves unable to unblock one of these SVOD services for a while.
In this case, you have to wait a few days, or even a few weeks, for it to renew its IP addresses and once again fall below the VPN detection radars. Currently, ProtonVPN is one of the few providers that maintains a permanent connection to the most popular video-on-demand platforms.
Check out our other Proton VPN guides and tutorials
- How to configure Proton VPN on iOS and Android?
- How to set up Proton VPN on a Chromebook?
- How to install Proton VPN on Android TV?
- Free VPN: Proton VPN vs Atlas VPN: which one to choose?
- Proton VPN: what is the free version really worth on Windows?