Netflix location spoofing not working (from the UK)

[random8374837 0]

I've been using AirVPN for a while to access different Netflix regions, but it seems to have stopped working.

 

Using both Eddie and Tunnelblick on OSX Yosemite, I can connect to whatever AirVPN server just fine, and my IP shows as being in the corresponding country. But, when I access netflix.com (using an incognito browser window - so no cookies), I always get redirected to https://www.netflix.com/gb/ - i.e. Netflix knows I'm in the UK, even though I'm using AirVPN.

 

Is anyone else experiencing this problem, or has an idea how to fix it?

[Zaroad 26]

Hi, make sure Chrome does not leak your IP on http://ipleak.net/ on WebRTC section

[rainmakerraw 94]

Hi, make sure Chrome does not leak your IP on http://ipleak.net/ on WebRTC section

 

WebRTC leaks are only an issue on Windows, so Mac OS X, Linux and BSD etc are unaffected. OP, I believe Netflix also uses timezone matching, so your VPN connection reports you are in, for example, the USA but your system info (supplied by the browser) will leak your real location. Staff will be the best people to ask about this as I'm sure there will be a better way around this than changing your machine's timezone every time you want to use your Netflix account.

[random8374837 0]

I believe Netflix also uses timezone matching, so your VPN connection reports you are in, for example, the USA but your system info (supplied by the browser) will leak your real location. Staff will be the best people to ask about this as I'm sure there will be a better way around this than changing your machine's timezone every time you want to use your Netflix account.

 

Thanks for the tip. I tried changing timezone (to NL), to see if it would help. Sadly, it didn't. There's no obvious timezone header going out in the request. These are all the headers in my first request to netflix.com, using an NL AirVPN server;

 

Accept:text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Encoding:gzip, deflate, sdch
Accept-Language:en-US,en;q=0.8
Connection:keep-alive
DNT:1
Host:netflix.com
User-Agent:Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2272.118 Safari/537.36

 

Their first response is a redirect to www.netflix.com, and they think I'm in NL (see the "tlr=NL" part of the cookie;

 

Set-Cookie:tlr=NL|1428916735393; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Thu, 07-Apr-2016 09:18:55 GMT
Set-Cookie:memclid=ab82ca88-03e0-4f05-bc8c-0683604ca953; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Tue, 12-Apr-2016 09:18:55 GMT; Path=/

 

But, after the request to www.netflix.com, I get back this;

 

location:https://www.netflix.com/gb/
req_id:d915e58d-f69b-4cef-947b-c3b1cceb127f
Server:shakti-prod i-8947146d
Set-Cookie:NetflixId=v%3D2%26ct%3DBQAOAAEBEATsuld9OPH3yv6vJMlLExOBYKuPwm25g-OGN2fweDFV_D0pB_wTnJ9W0bPR5xlLG4BIdbhwPV1VgYZLVM-Ts3cfHT5lro3fuUtDEm9k260AQ7cb6uYs1mE9iUgK4ePY2Vr8RQypoQs0JJRRyjL7lLjx6osBlxcIFxWnR62_vsrZ071rirjzVkyLDq0ZkvLtJ2djOTHF2QIWSxsDIOl_WglNNWL7YEKl4fa8rT8aS74sBGfGUEkJbNzjxWYJkAjvamLd1DBYnV4nnw6U_d0vC3EJP4ObVjeF_hzxpg2PP4FmfTR1rpuws8lLyeBhBOmpdCluJRUM8c6HHLoW8YCQE3gSUI2K3uLu6dvQh2-SeUrx0-57cjRBxS2eXVV5ImSQpxJsFq9VkWrwU7NtuYE6viwJpu9KN3yMKKvnFX_AhY--YRPhCmV3vvIrmRVOV_G1wz1jzKwrZ7_Wx8SqzFk2m_oo-2NjMr4FUVRMIX9drny65Fg.%26bt%3Dusr%26ch%3DAQEAEAABABQ6q6vbt17_v6xk03c0CPQdZzbW0WWmcRc.%26mac%3DAQEAEAABABQ3pruuku2o1p4Y0tSHe9j144APBc6gkb0.; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Tue, 12-Apr-2016 15:07:41 GMT; Path=/
Set-Cookie:tlr=GB|1428916735677; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Thu, 07-Apr-2016 09:18:55 GMT
Set-Cookie:SecureNetflixId=v%3D2%26mac%3DAQEAEQABABQl0gHJW5Wd636JsWPd0p2-4ou821uK87Q.%26dt%3D1428916735757; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Fri, 01-Jan-2038 00:00:00 GMT; Path=/; Secure
Set-Cookie:memclid=ab82ca88-03e0-4f05-bc8c-0683604ca953; Domain=.netflix.com; Expires=Tue, 12-Apr-2016 09:18:55 GMT; Path=/

So now tlr=GB, and I'm being redirected to www.netflix.com/gb/

 

This is all before logging in - just visiting their homepage from a Chrome incognito window.

 

Whatever they're doing, it's frustratingly clever!

[Staff 10014]

Hello,

 

are you querying VPN DNS?

 

Kind regards

[random8374837 0]

Yes, when I'm connected to AirVPN my /etc/resolv.conf contains "nameserver 10.4.0.1"

 

I checked on dnsleak.com and ipleak.net, and things were fine (which is expected, since I'm on a Mac).

[HomerSimpson 3]

I had a similiar problen but it went away in several hours. Maybe netflix is testing something?