Two providers of services that circumvent geoblocking of Netflix report that the company has taken measures to block them. Both UnoTelly and UnBlockUs report that NetFlix has made a change to their Android app that renders their services obsolete.
The services report Netflix has hardcoded Google's DNS servers in the Netflix Android app and that the app doesn't work if access to Google's DNS servers is blocked.
UnoTelly and UnBlockUS both offer a service allowing to view content which is normally only available in a specific country. Often movie streaming services are only allowed to show their content to users in a specific country by copyright holders.
Movie streaming services detect the user's location by their IP address and show the appropriate content accordingly. Both UnoTelly and UnBlockUS are able to hide the actual IP of an user by rerouting their internet connection through their servers. Because the services have servers in e.g. the United States, users in the United Kingdom can fool a movie streaming service into thinking they are located in the United States and thus gain access to content normally not available to them.
This method is very popular by users outside the United States who want early access to TV shows and movies released in the United States first. Another reason to use such a service is to get access to content only released in the US.
So far Netflix only appears to have taken measures against geoblocking in its Android app, so far there haven't been any reports of the company using the same measures in its apps for other mobile operating systems or e.g Smart TVs.
