Netflix starts blocking Australian subscribers from accessing US library

Australians will have to be content with the relatively meagre offering the local Netflix brings as the popular media streaming company has started blocking Aussies from accessing its US library.

uFlix, a Melbourne-based company that allows customers to access Netflix content from around the world normally inaccessible to Australian residents, said some of its users began receiving a message from Netflix when they tried to start their devices. “You seem to be using an unblocker or proxy. Please turn off any of these services and try again,” the message reads.

“Some users are starting to have issues with Netflix blocking non-Australian content when going through uFlix. Though it is only affecting a few users at the moment, we expect this number to grow,” the company wrote on its blog. It apologised to subscribers for the inconvenience and said it is working on a solution.

It has asked affected customers to follow a few steps so it could fix the problem.

Similarly, Express VPN, which offers virtual private network to allow users to bypass geo-blocked features, revealed it also received reports of Netflix blocking subscribers.

“We are well aware of this issue and our engineers have already started working on a solution for it,” a rep for the company told news.com.au. The spokesman added Express VPN already offered effective solutions to customers.

UFlix, on the other hand, isn’t worried about Netflix’s move to block non-US subscribers from watching its library. Managing director Peter Dujan said the blocking is currently not aggressive, which could mean Netflix is only testing new blocking methods on their customers.

“We suspect that they are blocking known IP ranges and gaining additional information from the user’s browser or mobile device and comparing it to the proxy and user IP addresses,” he told Fairfax Media, adding uFlix would ultimately outsmart the popular steaming company.

“At the end of the day, it’s simply a game of cat and mouse, and this is our job, so let’s play.”

Netflix hinted earlier this month that it would start to block geododging subscribers. “We look forward to offering all of our content everywhere to consumers being able to enjoy all of Netflix without using a proxy,” David Fullagar, VP of content delivery architecture of Netflix, wrote on a blog post.