Here’s a scenario most people have dealt with at some point. You’re on vacation, sitting in a hotel room in another country, and you pull up Netflix to watch something. Except now your library looks completely different.
Half your shows are gone. That documentary you were halfway through? Not available in this region.
It’s annoying. And it happens way more than it should.
The Short Version of Why This Happens
Websites know where you are. When you connect to the internet, your device gets an IP address that basically announces your location to every site you visit. Companies use this info to decide what you can and can’t see.
Sometimes it’s about licensing deals. Netflix doesn’t own global rights to everything, so they have to block content country by country.
Other times it’s government policy. Some countries block entire platforms or filter specific types of content. China’s firewall is the famous example, but dozens of other nations do similar things on smaller scales.
The numbers are kind of wild. Around 70 countries actively restrict internet access in some way, and that affects billions of people. We’re not talking about a few isolated cases here.
So what do you do if you need access to something that’s blocked? Maybe you’re traveling and want your regular streaming library back. Or you’ve found a guide like onlyfans unblocked and want to understand the tech behind it. There are a few solid options.
Proxies: The Basics
A proxy server sits between you and whatever website you’re trying to reach. Your request goes to the proxy first, then the proxy forwards it to the site. The site sees the proxy’s location, not yours.
There are different flavors. Datacenter proxies are fast and cheap but easier for websites to spot. Residential proxies use real home IP addresses, so they blend in better. ISP proxies split the difference, giving you residential-looking IPs with better speeds.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been talking about these tools for years. They’re big on the idea that people should control their own internet experience. Whether you agree with every position they take, they’ve done solid work documenting how access restrictions affect real users.
VPNs Get All the Attention, But…
VPNs are what most people think of first. They encrypt everything and route your whole connection through a server somewhere else. Simple to use, works on all your apps at once.
But VPNs have downsides. They can slow things down noticeably, and streaming services have gotten good at blocking known VPN IP addresses. You might pay for a service that doesn’t actually work on the sites you care about.
And if you need to do anything more technical (run bots, manage multiple accounts, scrape data for research), a VPN is usually the wrong tool.
Proxies give you more control. You can route specific traffic through them while leaving everything else alone. For business stuff, that flexibility matters a lot.
The Bigger Picture
This isn’t getting better. According to Freedom House’s tracking, internet freedom has dropped every single year for over a decade now. 2024 saw almost 300 documented internet shutdowns across 54 countries. That’s governments literally turning off the internet during protests or elections.
Wikipedia keeps a running tally of which countries do what. The usual suspects top the list (China, Iran, North Korea), but plenty of democracies restrict content too. It’s more widespread than most people realize.
Picking What Works for You
If you’re just trying to watch British TV while on vacation in Spain, a decent VPN probably does the job. If you’re running a business that needs to check prices across different regional Amazon sites, you’ll want proxy infrastructure.
Think about what you actually need. Speed? Anonymity? Reliability? Cost? No single tool wins on everything.
Free services exist for both VPNs and proxies. They’re usually slow, sometimes sketchy about what they do with your data, and often don’t work on the sites you actually want. Paying for something reputable tends to save headaches.
Where This Goes
The back-and-forth between restriction and access isn’t ending anytime soon. Sites get better at detection, tools get better at evasion. It’s been this way for years and there’s no reason to expect that’ll change.
What’s clear is that people want access to information, and they’ll find ways to get it. The tools are out there. The question is just figuring out which one fits your situation.
