Netflix insists its VPN blockade isn’t hurting business

It has been a few months since Netflix officially announced that it would be taking a harder stance against VPN users and those trying to circumvent geographical content restrictions. This has been a fairly controversial move but apparently, it isn't having an effect at all on the company's pocket.

During the Netflix quarterly earnings report last night, Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, said that despite the complaints and 40,000 people signing a petition to change Netflix's new policy, the company's earnings haven't seen a hit. In-fact, the streaming service has continued to see growth in markets across the world.

There were plenty of analysts predicted a hit to Netflix's financials following its VPN ban too but when asked about the impact of this, Reed Hastings brushed the complaints off: “It’s a very small but quite vocal minority. So it’s really inconsequential to us, as you could see in the Q1 results”.

On the other side of the coin, VPN services are struggling to combat the new Netflix restrictions. At first, Netflix used static IP addresses for its geo-blocking checks, which VPN providers could easily bypass by forwarding on traffic to a ‘clean' IP. However, since then, Netflix has stepped things up significantly and uses hundreds of regularly changing domains.

According to a VPN provider talking with TorrentFreak, this new method of enforcing geo-blocks is much more expensive for providers to circumvent as it requires forwarding all Netflix traffic through its own servers instead of just the packets trying to catch your geo-location.

KitGuru Says: A lot of paid VPN services no longer work with Netflix and despite earlier predictions, it doesn't appear to be slowing down the streaming service's business at all. Are any of you still using Netflix? Did the VPN ban cause you to cancel your subscription? 

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