Netflix users outside the U.S. have so far enjoyed a fairly lenient attitude from the streaming giant in regards to region policing, with savvy users able to access the heavenly delights of Netflix's enormous international catalogue for years thanks to VPN and smart DNS services.
Unfortunately, it appears the party is officially coming to an end, with customers of the Australian-based unblocking service uFlix starting to feel the sharp end of Netflix's plan to crack down on proxies.
A small number of uFlix's customers have received notices from Netflix while attempting to view the service. "You seem to be using an unblocker or proxy," says the notice, telling customers to "please turn off any of these services and try again".
Never back down
uFlix managing director Peter Dujan spoke to the Sydney Morning Herald about the issue, stating that "the blocking is currently not aggressive and we believe (for the moment) they are only testing the 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," said Dujan, who believes Netflix's blocking measures are "temporary at best".
Dujan is unfazed by Netflix's actions, assuring uFlix customers that the company is putting all its efforts into developing a workaround to the situation, and adding "at the end of the day it's simply a game of cat and mouse, and this is our job, so let's play".
