AFAICT, if a Netflix account owner sets up a VPN for their household, then anyone sharing the account who routes their Netflix traffic through that VPN would appear to be accessing Netflix from that household’s WAN IP address.
Is anyone doing this? Is it really that simple or are there more challenges?
EDIT: We get it, you like torrenting. Let’s keep comments on topic folks.
Tell them to use a free streaming site. Here’s one of the best: https://hydrahd.io/
Stop working harder for the businesses taking your money.
Not using vpn but using mail filter fwd. Mails from netflix with codes are fwd to all using the shared account. So if you need to reactivate a device you request a device code and get it in the mail.
Smart, thanks for the interesting idea.
Yes it works. It really is that simple!
EDIT: We get it, you like torrenting. Let’s keep comments on topic folks.
To be fair, you posted in the self-hosted community discussing an Issue for proprietary software.
To answer your question, which others have already done, yes your VPN tunnel will share the same IP as your household so long as it’s setup properly.
Just a stupid question - Is self-hosting (and this forum) only applies to open source products?
This is just my opinion but nope, not at all. There’s plenty of proprietary self-host software. Plex is self-host software and it gets talked about here despite being proprietary.
An issue which I aim to resolve using a self-hosted VPN.
I considered setting up a Pi for WireGuard at my mom’s house (her router doesn’t support VPN), so we could share subscriptions still, but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and risk that they would start VPN detecting from the client: could just imagine them sending her emails about it that would confuse her lol
I’ve done this. I have a Google TV Stick. If Netflix starts preventing people from opening their app when it detects a VPN (in Android), then you can do what I did and run the VPN on the routers themselves. In my case it’s ASUS routers on both ends, and they support Wireguard natively.
The benefit to doing it this way is that neither Netflix nor the Google TV itself are aware they’re on a VPN. The ASUS routers I use have a feature called VPN Fusion, where you can put different clients on or off of different VPN connections.
Edit: To clarify, I share with family. I’m not the account owner, but I’m one of the profiles in the account.
If you have an Android phone you’ve probably noticed a prompt at some point asking for your permission to transmit precise location information and enable wifi scanning. Every Android phone sends wifi SSIDs and MAC addresses along with its GPS location back to Google. The combination of all that information is almost as unique as a fingerprint. They can use that along with signal strength of each AP in the area to determine your device’s location with precision. (Google used to allow apps like Maps to be used with wifi scanning turned off, but no more.)
Although your Google stick can’t tell it’s on a VPN directly, Google can still pinpoint its physical location using their database of SSIDs and MAC addresses, and if they want to they can determine you’re using a VPN by comparing that to the expected location of your IP address. There probably aren’t enough people doing this right now to make it worth the trouble to detect your VPN, but IMO it’s just a matter of time before they decide it is.
I also expect that Google sells that information to every company willing to pay for it, so almost every single wifi enabled device can be precisely located if it can transmit data to the Internet.
We live in a scary time.
Interesting info. I switched to grapheneos recently, which allows you to disable a lot of that stuff. Combining that with WG, should make a solid way to share
no, but i do use a VPN to torrent whatever few movies worth watching that they shovel out
Netflix’s restrictions are not based on IP address. That would be an incredibly unreliable way of determining a location
They’re looking at the network you’re connected to. Exactly what they’re looking for is not public
How can I spoof EVERYTHING to be identical in all locations using my openwrt routers ? Do they look at my GPS data, or the name and addresses of other wifi and bluetooth devices ? Do they check my traceroute between my device and their servers ?
You don’t have to spoof everything. If you setup a wireguard server on your router then, then VPN into that then you’ll be on the actual network and Netflix cannot tell the difference.
Netflix has come out and said they don’t use GPS. I cannot authoritatively say they don’t traceroute or use other signals, but the wireguard tunnel works so you can only assume they do not.
No cause why would anyone pay for Netflix? Everything on there is available for free online.
Why go through the hassle?
Set up Jellyfin and use your VPN to fill it with whatever you’re wanting to pay corporate overlords for.
You’ve paid for the IP already from the years of subscriptions. At this point they’re just draining everyone dry. Stop letting them.
I do this, it’s been one with other providers but I don’t use Netflix.
Tail scale, wire guard, open VPN all work
They see your traffic coming from a residential ISP and don’t give it a second thought.
That said, if their service is that bad, piracy’s not a bad option. If someone’s going to provide me a service that I have to pay for and then tighten down the screws until let’s no longer reasonable, why should I care about following their rules?
@rumba @tatterdemalion if the app/device is collecting location and sending various other data then they’ll be feeding that into their decision making
Netflix has no GPS permissions. What various other data are you referring to?
@rumba Wi-Fi network, mobile network, dates, times, user profile, what’s watched, screen size, installation platform - probably a lot of the same techniques that browser fingerprinting uses
Fingerprinting is insufficient for geolocation. If they were a state actor or an ISP, maybe. Everyone who ever leaves their house with a device would show up as a false positive.
I did something similar to this before because I live in a different country from my home country and it’s not a problem if you host your own VPN in your own home, but if you use a commercial VPN service, the IP address may be flagged
If you pay for something to not abide by it’s rules, why do it?
It’s a messed up logic I really do not understand.
Arr!
I pay for Spotify for several reasons :
- Unlike Netflix & co. for movies/shows, the catalog size is satisfying on Spotify & co. for music ;
- Remote playback and volume control over Internet (branded “Connect”) ;
- Contributing to creator revenue.
- Voice assistant compatibility ;
Yet, I use a family subscription, which I share with strangers, because Spotify increase their prices often, and my wallet doesn’t like that.
Fun fact : when Spotify realizes someone’s doing that and prevents new people from joining (which only happens when people join and leave a lot), creating a new account with a new family subscription (even with the same IP address, home address, username and bank card) and moving everyone to it works fine.
I pay for the streaming services to fund the development and production of the shows I enjoy watching.
I torrent the content for my convenience.
It’s a classic “tragedy of the commons” scenario. I ask myself what would happen if nobody paid and everybody pirated.
No shade if that’s your choice, just recognize that you’re relying on all the people who do pay to keep the system going.
what would happen if nobody paid and everybody pirated
they wouldn’t just slowly starve to death you know. they’d start making the price more competitive and the service more user-friendly before they’d even had to pawn a single Porsche.
How many people listed in the credits of your favorite show do you truly think own one, much less multiple Porsches?
Right now this is the system we’ve got. It’s like tipping culture. You can refuse to tip, but the only person that’s impacted is your server who will never be able to change the system from within.
How many people listed in the credits of your favorite show do you truly think own one, much less multiple Porsches?
I don’t think those people are responsible for pricing. The Porsche comment was a flippant way of pointing out the whole parasitic machine that sits atop the actual creatives - the actors, the set designers, the script writers, all those people that you and I do want to support. All those people are not involved in pricing decisions or exclusivity contracts, and they’re mostly paid a salary so by the time a movie or series is out, they’re already on to the next job. By refusing to subscribe to all the myriad streaming services, you are mainly putting pressure on those executives to make a more appealing product.
I think you’re right in that it’s very reminiscent of US tipping culture (I’m not in the US), in that the people at the bottom are the ones who do the real work and yet they don’t get a fair share of the profits and instead have to take on unfair risk (i.e. the risk of not being tipped).
That said, I need to confess that I’m partly playing devil’s advocate, I pay for Netflix and just the other day I paid YouTube to “buy” a digital copy of a movie - for the exact reasons you said, I want to support the creative people behind the shows & movies I enjoy. I just don’t think it’s accurate to say that there’s a moral requirement to pay for entertainment, especially given how unfair the system currently is.
This is basically what happened to the music industry. Shawn Fanning scripted Napster, others followed suite. The RIAA squealed and threw a tantrum, busted a realitivly small amount of people, and then all of a sudden, we had .99$ downloads that were quality. The music industry has always been reactive in lieu of proactive. When AM radio first became a thing, the music industry execs squealed because the morons couldn’t figure out how to make a buck off of AM radio. ‘They’re taking our jerbs!’
AFAIC, Shawn was the pivot point in a digital age of music. I don’t condone it, but I understand it.
I see it differently. The service (as in content and delivery) should make me want to pay.
I’m all for paying the creators.
But, I do want to pay. I want to support the artists who create the shows and movies that I enjoy. I want people to be able to earn a living in the creative arts.
Yeah.
