Purchase HMA! Pro VPN using iDEAL

We are very pleased to announce that we have launched a new payment method for our Dutch customers, iDEAL online banking.

iDEAL is a hugely popular payment method in the Netherlands and will allow customers to purchase HMA! Pro VPN quickly and securely, using direct online transfers from their bank account.
Customers can now purchase one-off and recurring subscriptions for Pro VPN using iDEAL. Subscriptions purchased through iDEAL are all priced in Euros, so you know exactly how much is being charged to your account.

Supported banks
To use iDEAL you must have an account with one of the following banks:
ABN AMRO

ASN Bank

Frieland Bank

ING Bank

Knab

Rabobank

RegioBank

SNS Bank

Triodos Bank

Van Lanschot

Great News! You can watch the Winter Olympics in Sochi…wherever you are in the world

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia are upon us and will continue to 23 February.

Very few countries are broadcasting the games due to expensive broadcasting rights, but there is good news. Some of the main countries streaming the event live online include the US, UK, Australia, Canada and, unsurprisingly, most Nordic countries. If you live in the States you will need a subscription to the US network NBC, which has the broadcasting rights, and if you don’t live in the other countries streaming the games, regular access will be pretty much impossible.

Many winter sports fans based in countries without coverage may have given up on the idea of watching one of the many events such as curling, ice hockey, and snowboarding, but a VPN can easily make this possible.

We’re currently seeing a massive increase for our VPN service, particularly for our Norwegian servers, and we guess these are Norwegian expats wanting to watch the Olympics. For those of you who aren’t able to watch the games, you just need to purchase HMA! Pro VPN where our VPN will assign you a different IP address (choose from 68,000 IP addresses located in 132 locations, in 63 countries). If, for example, you want to watch the games shown by a UK channel,  simply connect to a UK based server and head to one of the channels who are broadcasting it and hey presto! You are now virtually residing in the UK; every online activity you perform is as if you are in the UK, therefore, you can watch the games.

It gets even better as we have upgraded a number of our servers, meaning that you will have even faster connections during this winter Olympic season.  You can enjoy the games from anywhere you are in the world. I think that deserves a gold medal!

Name of the Provider	Website Address
Hide My Ass	Visit Provider
Strong VPN	Visit Provider
Switch VPN	Visit Provider
Pure VPN	Visit Provider
IPVanish VPN	Visit Provider
Hotspot Shield Elite	Visit Provider

 

How to watch Sochi Winter Olympics online

The 2014 Winter Olympics opening ceremony starts in just two days, hosted in Sochi, Russia. It is currently billed as one of the most expensive Olympics ever. With the progression of the internet more and more events are now possible to be viewed online and in the majority of cases live as they happen. Unfortunately buying the rights to broadcast such events comes at a great expense and numbers as high as US$4.38 billion have been reported being paid by US network NBC to broadcast the event and future ones up until 2020.
Due to the cost issues there are very few countries who are going to be broadcasting the winter games with the main ones being the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Unfortunately for those based in the US the network NBC which has the rights will require you to have a subscription to that channel and to login to watch the games, this means for a huge portion of american viewers and viewers who do not reside in one of the three remaining countries that your chance of watching the games is pretty much reduced to zero.

With events stretching from the 6th February 2014 right up until 23rd February 2014 and up to 89 countries taking part from Albania to Zimbabwe that is an awful lot of events that are unavailable to an awful lot of countries.

But never fear! There is a way to watch the Sochi Olympics online anywhere in the world!
The UK broadcaster the BBC will be showing all events streamed live online. The downside to this is you have to be a UK resident to access this directly, however there is an extremely easy way to appear as if you’re in the UK to the BBC website thus bypassing any geographical restrictions that are in place and best of all, the product to do this is totally legal!

What you need is a Virtual Private Network, or better known by its initials, a VPN.
A VPN is basically a computer (server) somewhere else that feeds everything you do on your home internet connection through that third party connection and then on to the internet, their original use was by business so workers away from home could access the office. It probably sounds really complicated but the process from most providers is just one or two simple clicks to get up and running. In this case you need to connect to a server that is in the United Kingdom, once connected anything you do on the internet now, to the websites you visit, appears to them as if you’re located in the UK, when you disconnect you’re back to your normal connection. Due to this the BBC website will now stream you the live Winter Olympics events as if you are sat in the UK, even if you may be in Australia or China, the US or even Barbados. It really doesn’t matter where you are in the world, this process works for anyone.

So once you’re connected all you have to do is then head over to the BBC Winter Olympics site. Its also possible to connect to a Canadian server and catch some of the events on CBC.
You’re probably thinking it sounds too good to be true? Well, a VPN services costs money, but again, don’t worry, a good provider will only charge you about $5-$10 (£3-£6) at most and lets be honest, the Winter Olympics are only going to be on for about a month, so one month service will be ideal. There are plenty of other good uses for a VPN like watching the British BBC iPlayer anywhere in the world or watching the American Hulu service anywhere in the world, so you may wish to keep your service after the one month, but even if you don’t, you have only spent the price of one beer to have access to hundreds of events as they happen which is roughly 650 hours!

So you’re probably wondering, what VPN service do I get and how do I know if it is a good one? Luckily for you our site is dedicated to reviewing VPN services and so we’ve already tested more than a handful of providers to weed the good from the bad. Personally I would recommend looking at one of the following three providers because not only have we reviewed the first two and found them to be reliable and fast but a provider like VPN also has simple software and apps for all systems from Windows, Mac, Apple and Android.

Name of the Provider	Website Address
Hide My Ass	Visit Provider
Strong VPN	Visit Provider
Switch VPN	Visit Provider
Pure VPN	Visit Provider
IPVanish VPN	Visit Provider
Hotspot Shield Elite	Visit Provider

 

How to Watch the Winter Olympics Online

NBC has been showered with praise for its decision to stream every event from Sochi live online on NBCOlympics.com and its NBC Sports Live Extra apps for iOS and Android. It’s the first time that’s been done for the Winter Olympics, though NBC did the same for the London Games in 2012.

That’s great news for Olympics fans who want to watch everything as it happens, since the network’s primetime telecasts will obviously be tape-delayed. The big catch: You have to be a cable or satellite subscriber.

The online streams will include both the same live coverage you’d get on NBC’s cable channels and world feeds of individual events, NBC told me. The only thing that NBC won’t be streaming online are Friday’s opening ceremonies. “We want to put context to it, with the full pageantry it deserves,” NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus semi-explained to Variety. (As viewers learned in 2012, that’s NBC-speak for Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira chortling at their own ignorance.)

Cord-cutters, on the other hand, have nothing to cheer about, unless they live outside the United States. To access the coverage, you have to log in through your cable or satellite provider or try your luck with a live stream from overseas.

On one level, it’s understandable that NBC would prefer not to make its full suite of live coverage available to people who don’t pay for its cable channels. The network paid $4.3 billion for the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to the Olympics through 2020, and it wants to maximize its return on that investment. It does feel a little insulting, though, that those who have Internet service but not a TV can’t even watch the same network telecast that’s available for free over the air. Fox, by contrast, made its live stream of the Super Bowl available to everyone.

For those determined to watch some of the Olympics live without signing up for cable, there are a handful of potential loopholes.

First, you can pick a few scraps of online coverage via a “temporary pass” that NBCOlympics.com will offer to unverified users. That’s good for 30 minutes of live streaming the first time you visit the site, but just five minutes a day thereafter, so you’ll have to plan carefully.

Second, you can of course watch NBC’s primetime coverage over the air if you have a digital antenna. The broadcast coverage starts Thursday at 8 p.m. eastern, and you can find a full listings of times and events here.

Third, perhaps you know someone who has a cable-TV username and password and would be willing to share. You’d probably be breaking the law to take advantage of this, but that doesn’t stop a lot of people from doing it—or even writing New York Times stories about it.

Finally, depending on your scruples, you can take advantage of the fact that the United Kingdom and Canada do not discriminate against cord-cutters. As Forbes’ Amadou Diallo explains in his excellent guide to watching the Sochi Olympics without a cable bill, both the BBC and the CBC will offer extensive free live coverage of the events to online viewers in their respective markets. The catch is that your access will be blocked if you try to watch from the United States. It’s possible to get around this restriction using a virtual private network, or VPN, which can be configured to replace your normal IP address with one based in a different country.

As with logging in via someone else’s account, this is clearly against the terms of service for both the BBC and the CBC. Forbes’ Diallo goes into a lot of detail about the legality/illegality of using a VPN to watch overseas coverage. The short version: It’s very unlikely you’ll be prosecuted. So I guess the question is, just how badly do you want to watch the Winter Olympics?

Name of the Provider	Website Address
Hide My Ass	Visit Provider
Strong VPN	Visit Provider
Switch VPN	Visit Provider
Pure VPN	Visit Provider
IPVanish VPN	Visit Provider
Hotspot Shield Elite	Visit Provider