Netflix is now available in almost every country on the planet but due to licensing rights it’s not able to provide the same kind of content in every country. That’s one of the major reasons why people use VPNs to access the Netflix catalog from other countries, U.S. being the most popular since it offers the best content. Netflix has started cracking down on users that rely on VPNs for this and it’s now being helped by PayPal in this initiative.
Do a quick online search and you’ll find countless VPN services that advertise the fact that their service can be used to bypass Netflix geo-restrictions. These services are used by millions of people across the world but it’s getting harder now to cross the virtual borders that Netflix has set up.
PayPal has started to cut off payment services to online sites that advertise their services for bypassing virtual borders for Netflix. TorrentFreak reports that PayPal sent an email to Canadian service UnoTelly that it was cutting off payment processing for the site because of copyright concerns. UnoTelly has simply told its customers to switch from PayPal to credit cards.
It’s not known so far how aggressively PayPal is going to go after online services that allow their users to bypass geo-restrictions. The fact remains though that many people use VPNs to avoid censorship and maintain online privacy so it may prove to be a bit harder for PayPal to stop payment processing for all VPN services out there. After all it’s not illegal, in most countries, to use a VPN.