If you are traveling abroad or otherwise out of India, it can be difficult to watch content that is geo-restricted to this country. For many people working or studying abroad, that can mean going days, weeks, months or even years without watching content found on streaming services such as Zee TV, Star TV and Hostar, which only work when watching from Indian IP addresses.

Whenever you establish a connection to the internet, all online data transfers are tagged using an IP address, identifying your online-enabled device and providing a geo-location reference. India is one of the countries that geo-restricts many of its websites, so that only people living in India can access them, including many banking and video streaming services. Properly accessing and using these geo-restricted Indian websites without an Indian IP address is next to impossible.

Below are three ways that you can use an Indian IP address even when working, studying or traveling abroad.

Proxy

The fastest way to gain an Indian IP address while abroad is to use a proxy. There are free proxies that you can use to change your current IP address to an Indian IP address. Unfortunately, these proxies do not always out-manoeuvre India’s geo-blocking technology. More importantly, proxies offer no additional security or privacy measures, which leaves your IP address exposed. This leaves all of your online activities at risk of being monitored and tracked to your device by governmental agencies or snooping third parties.

Tor

Unlike proxies, Tor does not alter your IP address. While your IP address remains unchanged, your internet connection does not. Instead of your internet connection going straight to the server of your ISP, Tor routes your connection through many different nodes that are spread out in many different countries. The Tor connection is encrypted on both ends of the whole process, which makes your IP address viewable only up to the first node.

The result is that any site answering your request to access them will only see the end node’s IP address. What is My IP Address mentions that with Tor, you can effectively hide your IP address during your online sessions, getting past blocked websites and even accessing sites that are unique to the Tor network. So long as this IP address is Indian, it will trick India’s geo-blocking and website restriction technologies.

VPN

Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are another solution for changing your IP address to get around India’s geo-blocking restrictions. Using a VPN with a server located in India, you can make your online session virtually appear to originate in India with an Indian IP address. When using a VPN, your internet traffic is encrypted. These VPN encryption methods protect the privacy of your data from monitoring and tracking activities that governmental bodies, ISP network administrators and potential hackers may engage in. You can check always compare several VPN services that can outdo Indian’s geo-blocking methods.

VPNs like TotalVPN (source) can help you change your IP address to virtually appear to be living in India, all the while protecting your data from parties that may wish to monitor your online activities. Additionally, some VPNs offer a no-logs policy, meaning that these VPN providers will not keep track of your activities.

To use a VPN to access Indian websites using an Indian IP address, follow these simple steps:

• Select a VPN with servers in India.
• Download and install the right VPN program or application for a device of your choice.
• Connect to an Indian server on the VPN’s server network.
• Check out a geo-restricted Indian site while outside of India to test its accessibility.

Conclusion

Whether you want to use banking services, stream movies and TV shows, or do anything else from an Indian website while abroad, you have a few ways to overcome India’s geo-blocking technology. If you are not concerned with having your online activity tracked, you could opt to change your IP address through a proxy. For more security and privacy, you could use the Tor network to browser Indian websites through an encrypted connection.

Lastly, you could use one of the many VPN providers around to mask your real IP address, protect the anonymity of your online sessions and browse Indian websites without geo-restrictions, even while abroad.