Intro

Many people these days consume their entertainment on the go. Hence, services that stream TV shows, movies and music through websites and apps are increasingly becoming the norm. This new way of providing entertainment is easily accessible to most people as all they need is a computer or a mobile device with Internet.

Bypassing geoblocking

However, folks in some regions may be denied access to certain contents due to licensing restrictions by the studios and content creators. Their locations are detected via IP geolocation and then blocked from accessing said contents. This is of course easy enough to circumvent as one can just Google how to bypass such geoblocking practices.

Often, it involves the use of a proxy server to mask the user’s actual location. The user could be in the United Kingdom but by using a proxy server located in the United States, they can get access to streaming contents that are only available to Americans.

Virtual Private Network proxies

As mentioned above, one can employ the use of proxy servers to appear to be in another location. Most people would go for the Virtual Private Network (VPN) proxies. They are easy to use and does not usually require the installation of additional software. VPNs generally come with data center IP addresses as they are servers hosted by data centers. Some VPNs though, utilize the residential ISP IP addresses as the proxy servers are being hosted on home computers.

Residential proxy servers are hard to detect

When a VPN server has a data center IP address range, it is relatively easy for a streaming content provider to detect and block if needed. It is when the VPN uses a residential IP address range that it gets more challenging to identify if that user is using a proxy server. After all, residential IP address ranges are used by normal home users so the provider runs the risk of blocking a legitimate subscriber.

IP2Proxy PX10 is able to detect residential proxies

Fortunately for streaming providers, the IP2Proxy PX10 database contains a daily updated list of proxies, including the elusive residential proxies. Just compare the user’s IP address against the PX10 data and any proxy servers (including residential) can be detected and blocked from receiving contents. For a large streaming provider, a PX10 Site license means the data can be installed and used by an unlimited number of machines in that organization. The fixed pricing for the PX10 Site license makes it an economical and valuable tool to block unauthorized access to geoblocked contents.

Read more about the IP2Proxy PX10 database.