Has the BBC Blocked all VPN Workarounds?

For millions of people across the world, there is one reason and one reason only that they use a VPN – it’s called BBC iPlayer.  For many expats using a Virtual private network has become a lifeline to home, for others it’s just the chance to watch quality TV without being bombarded with advertising every few minutes.

Many of us who live outside the UK remember the disappointment of connecting to the BBC iPlayer site and discovering that it simply wouldn’t work from outside the United Kingdom.

Fortunately, this was short lived as we discovered that there is a workaround being used by millions of people across the world.  This is the reason why technologically challenged pensioners suddenly started ordering proxy servers and VPNs – so that they could still watch Match of the Day, the News or Eastenders from anywhere in the world.

How do VPNs Work with the BBC?

Virtual Private Networks have many uses including allow the user to encrypt their data and hide their location when browsing online.  The offshoot of this is that when a website checks your location, you can control what it sees.  Connect through a UK VPN and you can watch any of the UK TV sites online including the BBC.  I use one every day to watch the BBC News stream live wherever I happen to be.  In fact, now the most advanced VPN solutions like Identity Cloaker even allow you to switch locations at will, so you can watch US, Canadian, Irish or Australian TV channels too.

Some of the media sites have fought back, Hulu for example waged war on these services in 2014 wiping out the use of proxies and blocking many VPN services.  Netflix, ABC and NBC also have active controls and frequently target these services.  However, the BBC has never seemed to try very hard to block remote users who use a work around.

BBC Blocks Most VPNs

Now this has all changed, the BBC has blocked thousands of UK based VPN addresses.  It appears to have drawn up a list of providers to target, from my research it appears to be the most obvious targets.  The largest VPN providers and those who actively market their services as TV watching VPNs have been the biggest sufferers.

There has been a wave of disappointment across the globe as people fired up their VPNs over the last few days and were greeted with the simple message that the BBC iPlayer was only available in the UK.

How the BBC are Blocking your VPN Service?

So how have the BBC figured out how to block VPN connections? Well, it’s actually quite straight forward and unfortunately hugely effective.  It’s still really difficult to identify an individual VPN connection – Chinese people are still using them despite their Government’s best efforts.  However it’s relatively easy to look for identifying patterns of ‘likely VPN’ connections.

BBC iPlayer can Detect VPN IP Addresses

When the BBC’s network administrators see thousands of individual connections all using the exact same IP address then it’s fairly safe to assume their sharing some sort of server.  It may be from a work place proxy, but just as likely to be from a commercial VPN server.   Indeed it’s more likely really as it would have to be huge organisation all allowing all their employees to stream TV at work!

These IP addresses can be identified and temporarily blocked or blacklisted quite easily.  IN fact if they decide on the number, it can all be done automatically on rules applied to their firewalls and routers.  It is why the free proxies and VPNs were first to stop working, the numbers using these were huge and they were easy to spot.

VPNs Need IP Management

Fortunately, there is a solution, there has been no great technological leap in VPN detection, it appears the block is simply placed on the IP addresses.   If the VPN companies manage their resources it’s still possible to maintain access to popular sites like the BBC and ITVX.  It does take effort though and obviously you need the resources to manage the connections.

There are a few VPN services which work perfectly well and the BBC VPN block hasn’t stopped them working at all.  Here’s a couple of them if you want to continue to use the BBC VPN workaround –

NordVPN

NordVPN is probably the biggest VPN in the world, they obviously have a problem as they have more users than anyone else.  Fortunately, they have the resources to manage this and have developed an innovative solution.   Instead of trying to keep all their IP addresses open to use the BBC iPlayer, they have instead focused on a selection of them.

NordVPN carefully manage a select number of servers, checking connections and routinely rotating the IP addresses.   This keeps them under the threshold and stops the addresses being blocked.  These are the servers you should use if you subscribe to NordVPN and want to watch BBC iPlayer.

BBC NordVPN Servers – UK# 1840-1847, 1850-1863, 1865, 1869, 1873, 1875-1878, 1880-1881, 1900-1901, 1903-1904, 1911, 1913, 1917, 1919-1920.

Identity Cloaker

Identity Cloaker has been unaffected so far, and you can still watch BBC iPlayer through their VPNs.  The reason is probably simply they are much smaller and simply don’t have the same number of users connecting to the BBC at any given point.

They still monitor the connections though and will rotate IP addresses out if any of them get blocked.

Further Reading: My VPN Doesn’t Work