Netflix shot it really hard when it announced to the world that it would block VPN services that bypass regional blocks. The specialized providers have responded in style, but today they confirmed that it will be enough to change the IP addresses to weaken any countermeasure.
“TorGuard closely monitoring the situation, and we have recently introduced new measures which may circumvent any proposed lock in our network”, wrote Ben van der Pelt of TorGuard, a company specializing in online privacy protection services. “VPN users, who have problems with access to Netflix, it is recommended to contact us to obtain a working solution.”
In practice, the Netflix action is considered a pain in the ass, perhaps even a labor cost for VPN services Free and Proxy service providers, but nothing more. Another operator like iNinja confirmed that switching to another IP is a trivia. According to most, what Netflix wants to do is harm its customers who regularly pay a subscription to access its content. Why shouldn’t it be possible for them to have access no matter where they are?
In the coming weeks, it will be clearer if Netflix actually joked or if it really found a suitable countermeasure. In the meantime, it is celebrating an excellent quarterly (4th quarter). Its subscribers have now reached 167 million, thanks to the landing in other countries. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Netflix’s revenue grew 31% to $ 5.47 billion, and net income nearly 4.5 times to $ 587 million.
Netflix plans to add another 7 million paid subscribers in the first quarter of 2020, which is significantly lower than the result of the first quarter of 2019 when the base grew by 9.6 million. Netflix’s net profit also doubled from last year, from $ 344 million to $ 709 million. The decrease in growth rates in the company is explained by “a slightly increased level of churn recorded in the United States.”
