One of the most absurd aspects of the Web today is the geographic blocking that certain providers apply to their services and content. Add to that the government restrictions that prevent access to portals such as social networks and YouTube. Since these limits became known, users have been fighting an endless battle to overcome them, but now they have a new series of extensions, courtesy of Hotspot Shield.
Users' tolerance for geographic restrictions on services is wearing thin. Providers and distributors give excuses so empty they don't stand up to the slightest analysis, and contrary to belief, all they achieve is harm their artists, limiting the reach of their work and actively blocking international sales. Even Netflix has been caught in this perverse maze, with copyright hawks demanding an end to "VPN pirates" while users who are paying for a legal service. We will remember Valve's words to the end: The pirate is actually a poorly served customer. And as such, the user must solve blocking problems in their own way.
The New Hotspot Shield Extension
A new option arrives through Hotspot Shield, one of the most popular VPN services on the Web. Instead of downloading the traditional application, we now have the possibility of getting an extension compatible with Chrome and Firefox. All you have to do is activate the extension through its icon and choose a virtual location, which for now is limited to the United States, Canada, Netherlands, Denmark, and France. Overall, the balance for the new extension is positive. Blocked services like Pandora work without issues, but it's inevitable to find exceptions, such as the free version of Hulu, which can detect the VPN immediately.
Earlier I mentioned that the Hotspot Shield extension is available for both Google Chrome and Firefox, but if we follow our tests, we recommend the Chrome build first. The Firefox extension has presented many problems and throws several alerts about missing certifications in Firefox 40, so despite its secure origin, it's probably better to wait a bit for an update. If you want to try it anyway... we'll leave the download link below.
