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Want to watch US Netflix? You need this simple tool

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Chris DeGraw/Digital Trends

Whether you’ve seen something on a streaming service that you want to watch but it isn’t available in your country, or you’re tired of encountering “content not available in your region” messages, there’s a cheap and easy solution to your online entertainment woes: IPVanish. IPVanish is one of the best VPNs and a long-standing favorite of ours, and along with keeping you safe from online dangers, this virtual private network can also allow you to enjoy region-locked content from Netflix and other entertainment platforms. Sound interesting? Here’s what you need to know.

Virtual private networks are primarily used for privacy and security while using the internet, and while they’re great for that, VPNs have some other often-overlooked uses, too. How a VPN like IPVanish works is by routing your internet connection through remote servers that the virtual private network service operates. The connection is completely encrypted from tip to tail — in other words, from your computer (or whatever other internet-connected device you’re using) to the website or service you’re connecting to, essentially creating a “tunnel” of sorts that protects your online traffic and any data contained therein.

While the implications for privacy and safety are obvious here, connecting through the IPVanish VPN servers has the added benefit of letting you effectively mask the geographic location that websites and services see when you’re connecting to them. If you’re outside of the U.S., for example, you can connect to an IPVanish server located in this country, and any website or service you use will see this as your location. This allows you to effortlessly bypass region-based restrictions on content such as censored websites and streaming, especially streaming apps like Netflix which regularly enforces such limitations on its paying subscribers.

This works both ways, too, of course, and not just for Netflix. Users in the U.S. can connected to any of the 1,600-plus IPVanish servers across the globe to access similar region-locked and censored content, and there are many other sites and services that restrict access based on geography/ YouTube is a common one that springs to mind, and you’ve almost certainly encountered that annoying “Content not available in your country” error message before when trying to watch a video.

IPVanish is one of the top-ranked VPN providers in the world, but it doesn’t cost much — and this introductory offer for new customers makes it an even sweeter deal. New subscribers can sign up and get their first year of IPVanish VPN service for $29 right now. After that, the VPN package costs $90 per year, which only comes to $7.50 per month. You can also upgrade to the VPN + Backup package which adds automatic online data storage, lost data restoration, and remote device wiping for $32 for the first year (then $100 per year after that).

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