Can't bypass Netflix proxy protection

[pamposzek]

Hey,

I've had some problems with various NordVPN helpers, but this one seems to work and not disconnect wildly.. web surfing works perfectly, but I can't watch Netflix movies because of the proxy protection. German servers should work (and they did when trying nordvpn-openpyn for example), but no matter what country I choose, I'm getting the same error.

Using Arch 4.19.4 and nordnm 0.6.1

Some things I did before:

Installing nm-connection-editor – previously I had both my device and "Wired" listed in Ethernet connections. I enabled "connect automatially with priority" to my device connection and after restart the "Wired" option was gone. "Proxy" tab is default (set to none). Is there any trick to this? I noticed that after using nordnm, my connection is established much faster, and when using previous helpers there's been around 20 seconds delay.

Is Netflix simply not supported, or there are some things I could check? Thanks in advance.

After changing it to dedicated server it worked once, but after restart it didn't. Used the very same server (de502).. seems random.

[vfosterm]

Hello,

Netflix is logging VPN servers and as best as I can tell completely refusing incoming connections from them. Since Nord has its servers listed publicly they are quite trivial to blacklist. I believe having the dedicated IP service would help with this as Netflix couldn't know what IP that you've been assigned however they might still blacklist it. I've heard that even people running netflix through VPS servers on services like amazon AWS are having troubles with netflix blacklisting IPs. There are only so many IPv4 addresses in the wild and essentially all of them have been used up now. So it seems you will need to investigate other avenues to bypass georestrictions ;)

In summery this is an issue with Netflix and VPN services in general and the nordnm tool has no way of fixing it.

[pamposzek]

Thanks for clarifying this.. I can use nm-applet to simply disable VPN if I want to watch Netflix, that shouldn't be a problem.

However, using Nord VPN app on my iPad works with Netflix with no problems, so I wonder if it's 100% fault of Netflix. Maybe those apps on iOS/Windows somehow work better? And again, nordnm follows official installation guide from their website, so in theory it should work the same.

I tried to install nordvpn-bin from AUR and it worked. I avoided it because it says it's outdated, but it's AUR version of the official app.. so I guess I'll see if it doesn't disconnect often.

Thanks again for your reply.

[vfosterm]

Very curious. I just downloaded the Netflix app on my android phone and was able to reproduce your results. The only "excuse" I have for this is that the mobile apps go through a special API which doesn't IP block. I've tried to go through the official windows 10 app with the official VPN app and it doesn't work. First it stopped working for the United States now every server I've tried doesn't work. If I get really motivated I'll mitm my phone and see where exactly it connects to. A fun idea for you would be to download an android emulator on your computer and see if that works.

[pamposzek]

That's interesting. Well, I might check Windows 10 app to see if it works there too. From what I see, nordvpn-bin uses openvpn for its connections, but unlike other script helpers, it doesn't disconnect on me.. so far. At least we established that it has to do with the app and – at least in my experience – official one seems to work much better than others.

[zlb323]

I know this is old, but from what I understand of how NordVPN works you don't just need to connect to a Germany server but a Germany Obfuscated Server. The Nordvpn Android app has a setting that will allow you to connect specifically to obfuscated servers. I have had luck with connecting to an obfuscated server on my phone from the country I want to spoof and then making sure to log into that specific server with NordVPN-NetworkManager. (For instance Germany #530)

[vfosterm]

Obfuscated/unobfuscated doesn't make a difference as Netflix is blacklisting/blocking IP addresses that are known to be owned by VPN companies. They seem to do this most aggressively for American VPN servers. So really it's just luck of the draw to see if the IP you are assigned is blacklisted or not. Nord does also offer a dedicated IP address service but that costs extra.

[zlb323]

Looking into it a little bit more I suppose you are right. I have had some luck with the obfuscated servers working on my instance so maybe if your having issues with it you could give that a shot as a work around. Also, I noticed that there isn't support for choosing to connect to an obfuscated server. If that's a feature we want I would be willing to implement that.

[vfosterm]

I've looked into it myself and it seems that the only way to implement it is by installing an older version of openvpn that has XOR encryption patched in by a third party. So it's kinda a pain and crashes sometimes. I've been researching another way to do it without using openvpn at all but haven't been able to put all that much time into it yet.

On Thu, Jun 20, 2019, 18:10 Zach Bellew notifications@github.com wrote:

Looking into it a little bit more I suppose you are right. I have had some luck with the obfuscated servers working on my instance so maybe if your having issues with it you could give that a shot as a work around. Also, I noticed that there isn't support for choosing to connect to an obfuscated server. If that's a feature we want I would be willing to implement that.

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