There are many reasons for globetrotting expats and other travelers to use a VPN, but unblocking country specific content is one of the top reasons many of these individuals give when they become a customer of VPN-accounts.com. Some websites, applications, media services, and other content can often be restricted to a specific country or region. Whenever you are traveling, being able to access some of these sites is vitally important.

Why some content is country specific

One type of country specific content you will encounter when traveling abroad is local news. Many news websites are not available outside of a specific market, and some of them may be blocked by other regions for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, the motivation is political. Other times, the local news you are trying to obtain may just be a casualty of Internet filters that are designed to block almost every site that originates from a specific country.

At other times the motivation to block country specific news content is less nefarious and motivated solely by economics. Let’s say that you are from Canada and wish to access your CBC Player or the very popular Global TV. Global TV is a favorite among Canadian Internet users because it offers a variety of popular programs such as The Good Wife, The Simpsons, and The Young and the Restless. There is only one problem with Global TV. It’s only available in Canada. If you cross the country’s borders your access to Global TV will be blocked.

Why does this happen? For starters, if you visit the United States from Canada and want to watch The Simpsons then the local Fox affiliate wants you to watch the show on their station because you will be exposed to local advertising. This is how television stations make money. While you are visiting America they want to entice you to shop and visit local businesses. With Global TV you aren’t subjected to the same local advertisements. Likewise with sporting events and any other type of program you can imagine. So, filters are used to block the CBC player and Global TV outside of Canada.

But shouldn’t you really have a choice in the way you decide to watch television programming. And what happens when you want to watch one of your local sports teams in action or access a weather forecast for your hometown?

Preserving your access to country specific content

To continue using the example of Global TV, let’s clarify what happens when you leave Canada and how you can circumvent a block with a VPN.

The way Global TV usually determines your location is by looking at your IP address. IP addresses are very specific and can help to pinpoint your general location. It is a very simple thing to determine if you are in Canada by observing your IP address. When your IP address reveals that you are in the United States or the United Kingdom your access is restricted.

This type of country specific block can be easily circumvented with a VPN. In order to do this you will need to purchase your VPN from a provider that offers a server in Canada. At VPNaccounts.com we offer many servers to choose from. In this case you would simply choose to use our Canada server to establish a VPN connection that forms a tunnel between your machine and our server. In effect, this conceals your actual IP address and replaces it with an IP address associated with our Canadian server.

If it sounds complicated it really isn’t. Once you complete your purchase of VPN service we provide you will all the credentials you need to configure the VPN on your machine. There is no software to download and the VPN connection you create will be an actual connection, not a proxy that runs from your browser and has the potential to pass harmful malware to your system.

In this example you would choose the credentials for the Canada server and configure them. Connect to the Internet as usual and then connect to your Canada VPN. It now appears to all incoming connections that you are within Canada. If you are in doubt simply go to the Google homepage and you will see the word CANADA beneath the Google logo.

Signing up for country specific content

Since we are talking about country specific content specifically and Global TV in general, we wanted to end with a few words about signing up for this service if you are outside of Canada. In order to create an account you will need to be connected to your Canada VPN server. If you attempt to visit the site with an IP address that is outside of Canada you will not be permitted to register an account. This is the same with most services that offer country specific content, so always check to make sure your are connected to the proper VPN server for the region in which you want to access a restricted web application. Click here to buy Canada vpn access!