HMA! Tip: What is a dynamic DNS host and what do I need it for?

Dynamic DNS hosts are a useful tool for many VPN users, but using one also makes sense without a VPN.
Most IPs are dynamic – which means that they change on every reconnection. This happens with the IPs your internet provider assigns to you as well as the IPs you are given when connecting to our VPN service.

Of course, you won’t know your IP before you manually check it at IP verifying websites and when you’re not at your computer, you won’t be able to do that, making it impossible to access your computer externally.


There are countless reasons why you may want to access your home computer from somewhere else, for example, on vacation or when visiting a friend. Perhaps to stream music, download files or access important documents.

Now unless you checked your IP and wrote it down before leaving (assuming it has not already changed since then), you’ll be unable to do that. That’s where a dynamic DNS host comes in. It looks like a simple subdomain, e.g. MyPC.no-ip.org and always points to your current IP, independent of any IP changes due to reconnection or VPN use. This enables you to simply access your home computer through that hostname instead of its current IP. Simply connect to it.

Requirements for this are that you registered a dynamic DNS hostname somewhere and that you have set up a dynamic DNS client either on your router or on your computer, which keeps updating the hostname with your current IP every few seconds.

This especially makes sense when using a VPN on a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server as upon VPN connection, you have to access it through the VPN IP instead of its usual IP.

For more information, links and examples of use check our article about Dynamic DNS

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Hulu and the VPN block

From the USA spy allegations to revelations that governments are selling private data to companies, more and more Americans are turning to VPNs to protect their privacy and secure their information away from prying eyes. VPNs have never been so popular and are becoming the norm – a VPN is now as important as your internet connection!


Many businesses in the States, both large and small, use a VPN for many purposes, such as connecting out-of-office staff to their networks, and of course, the necessity to safeguard their privacy when out and about using public Wi-Fi.


Recently news come to light that Hulu – the United States largest movie and TV streaming service have blocked many VPN users from accessing the network. Blocking VPN IP addresses which thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans use for safety and privacy reasons, is leaving Hulu subscribers out in the cold.

Hulu, apparently has a large list of IP addresses that frequently use its site to gain access, however, Hulu are not checking to see if they are connecting using a VPN, they have a list of IP addresses which they block. At HMA! 85% of our American servers remain unaffected.

When Hulu subscribers connect to a VPN to access their favourite TV shows and movies such as 30 Rock and American Idol, they are receiving the following message:

“Based on your IP-address, we noticed you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool.  Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S  If you’re in the U.S you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu.

“If you think you’re receiving this message in error, please submit this form.”

Let’s look at this sentence again “If you’re in the U.S you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu.” 

So, if someone in America is in an internet cafe and using a VPN to protect themselves whilst using public Wi-Fi to stream a show on Hulu, they will be blocked. Surely that’s not right? Those who want to safeguard their privacy, and stream shows using a VPN are being punished by Hulu. The only way they can watch is to lift the VPN – thereby opening the doors to thieves and hackers.

Is Hulu saying, that they do not care about the privacy and security of their customers?
Maybe Hulu has forgotten that one of the main reasons people use a VPN is to provide them with online security and encrypt their personal and confidential information.

Is Hulu prepared to lose thousands of its American subscribers? As yet, Hulu has not made any comment, but for the thousands of US Hulu subscribers, this is a great concern which needs to be addressed.
Over to you, Hulu!

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American Netflix In Canada: Many Have Discovered How To Get It

Canadians have figured out that when it comes to Netflix, they're getting a bit of a raw deal.
Americans and Canadians pay roughly the same price for the video-streaming service, but U.S. customers get more than twice the titles. The situation is the result of a complex licensing environment for movies and TV shows. But it seems many Canadians are unwilling to accept this state of affairs.
An untold, but significant, number of people are turning to virtual private networks (VPNs) to mask their IP addresses and trick Netflix, and other geo-blocked services, into believing they reside in the United States.
A quick look at some analytics from Google shows that there has been a steady uptick in searches for how to use VPNs for just this purpose since Netflix was introduced to Canada in 2011.

On average, there are thousands upon thousands of searches each month in Canada aimed at figuring out how to gain access to Netflix's American library.

A bevy of new services have rushed to meet the demand. Canadian companies SurfEasy and Unblockus are two of the most prominent, but there is a whole slew of businesses offering to help you get around geographical restrictions. There are thousands of YouTube tutorials to help guide you through the process.
But, unless you're willing to use pirated VPN codes that will likely be unreliable, you'll have to pay. The average fee per month comes in at around $5, nearly doubling the $7.99 price for Netflix. But many Canadians seem to think it's worth it.
A quick look at the content that's only available to U.S. users explains why.

Titles You Can't Get On Canadian Netflix

 

Netflix doesn't condone VPNs and using one clearly violates the company's terms of service agreement. Nevertheless, Netflix doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop consumers from using a services that spokesperson Jenny McCabe said are "like pirating."

But so far, it seems that using VPNs is legal in Canada.
“I don’t think they’re an obvious copyright infringement,” said Canadian professor and internet expert Michael Geist. “If it gets bigger we may see efforts to restrict it.”
“I guess my view would be: so long as it remains a relatively small part of the market it will fly below the radar screen even if people are aware of it," he added.

Geist, who works as an advisor to SurfEasy, said VPNs are an important tool in ensuring the internet remains a tool for promoting freedom.

“I first starting using a VPN when I travelled to China and was seeking to circumvent their firewall," he said. "These tools are important for protecting privacy, they’re important for free-speech issues, and so any attempt to regulate would have to take that into account.”

But it seems most Canadians are using VPNs to gain access to the ever-increasing bounty of video content available online. And VPNs aren't just for Netflix, they can also be used to access Hulu, music-steaming service Spotify and all the rest of the content protected by geo-blocking.
And it doesn't stop with the United States. Many VPN companies will hook you up with an IP address for a number of different countries. The United Kingdom, for example, has its own unique Netflix catalogue.

Once a VPN is set up (changing the DNS settings on your home router makes the most sense for the majority of users), you can usually change your location via your service's website. This makes switching back and forth between countries easy.

For many, however, the technical details may prove daunting. Enter VPN browser extensions, perhaps the easiest way to get an American IP. While sometimes unreliable, these easily downloaded add-ons for Chrome and Firefox make using a VPN much easier.

But giving up on Canadian Netflix entirely doesn't make much sense. Many excellent titles are actually only available in Canada. Check out the slideshow below for some examples.

VPN Issues In KitKat Are Interfering With Connection Routing, Fixes Are Planned For Some Of Them

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) aren’t the sexiest topic out there, but they are a pretty vital part of daily operations for almost every major company and many small businesses. VPNs are used to securely connect a computer, tablet, or phone to a company's private network over the Internet, thus allowing people to work remotely while ensuring strict authentication and enforcing administrative policies. Even some power users are apt to set up a VPN if they want to make their home networks accessible while they're on the road.

During the development of Android 4.4 KitKat, the time came to spruce up some of the lower-level pieces that are responsible for creating and managing VPN connections. As with any normal code rewrite, a few bugs crept into the mix. Unfortunately, some of these bugs proved to be relatively catastrophic to a lot of users, leaving them unable to conduct their business.

Symptoms

The more involved details of each symptom are hard to explain without going into very extensive (and boring) depth about network routing and configurations. Instead, I'm going to stick with the overall effects that most people will witness when they try to establish a connection.

• Tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 simply doesn’t work. In other words, if you connect to a VPN over IPv4 and the other end supports IPv6, any IPv6 address you attempt to communicate with will be unreachable. Everything will appear to be connected and working, but those data packets simply won't leave your device.
• Changing connection types (e.g. from wifi to 3g) will result in a disconnection from the VPN. The disconnection might be intentional, as it could be a safety measure to prevent possible snooping. Reconnecting to the VPN is the bigger issue. Some people claim that they can reconnect over the new interface right away, some say that they can only reconnect over the original interface, and some people simply cannot reconnect over any type of interface without first rebooting. To be fair, there isn’t enough information to completely rule out specific apps or environmental conditions.
• Some apps use VPN routing to establish tethering connections over non-standard interfaces (like Bluetooth). When this occurs on KitKat, it can look like a VPN connection has been established but data packets fail to travel in either direction. This is known to cause issues for apps like BlueVPN and Open Garden. (A mediocre workaround for this is discussed below.)

What Is Affected

Each of the issues described here affect every Nexus device running KitKat 4.4 - 4.4.2. Google Play Edition devices and anything running an aftermarket ROM based on AOSP should also be affected.
HTC and Samsung devices are mentioned in some of the threads, but none of the complaints specify if they are running stock Android (GPE variants or AOSP ROMs). One report claims the 4.4.2 update for the HTC One does not suffer from the Bluetooth tethering bug. Another comment also seems to clear the Galaxy Note 3 of the same bug, but it indicates that the other bugs are probably still be present.

Causes

A root cause hasn’t been clearly identified and there’s still not enough information to determine with any certainty if these bugs originate from the same error or if multiple factors are at work. Most of the problems center around handling of the routing table, so it’s possible all of these are manifestations of the same core bug.

Workarounds

Unfortunately, the last few months have gone by without any really good solutions for most of these bugs. In fact, short of offloading the VPN duties to a router, most people have been at a standstill since updating to KitKat.

There has been a fairly crumby workaround discovered by people using HMA VPN to tether over Bluetooth, which is to also be connected to WiFi at the same time. Yes, you read that right. If your device is connected to a WiFi access point, even one that has no uplink connection, it then becomes possible to use apps like BlueVPN and Open Garden. Of course, this isn’t the most battery efficient or convenient option, but it might help when desperate times call for desperate measures.

Fixes Are Coming

On the positive side, all of these issues are probably just about to vanish. A project member dropped into the Bluetooth tethering thread to mark it as FutureRelease while acknowledging that several bug fixes are scheduled for the next release of Android. The other threads relating to VPN issues are still sitting without a change in status, but it’s likely that many of those issues simply haven’t been marked.

Wrap-Up

VPNs aren’t used by a large percentage of the population, but those who do use them, rely on them heavily. To suddenly lose access to networks that are vital for your job can be a crippling experience. We’ll just have to wait until the next update (probably 4.4.3) to find out which, if any of these bugs survived, but it sounds like most people will be able to get back to their normal routine fairly soon.

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