Using a VPN

Sometimes your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or network equipment are blocking certain actions in your network traffic. Also, sometimes certain internet services are blocked for certain regions (like some video you cannot watch because you are not from the U.S.A). You can use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to “fake” your IP (and also the country you are from).

There are free VPN’s and paid VPN. Paid VPNs sometimes are faster and have more servers/countries to choose from. Some experts say free VPN services pay their servers by colleting information and selling it. Others say this does not contain passwords or name and address information. But more statistical information like how many people from country X visit website Y. But this should be taken in account when deciding which VPN, you are going to use. Also, who knows if the paid VPNs aren’t doing the same? But this just as a disclaimer.

Opera browser (https://www.opera.com/ ) has a build-in function you can enable in the settings to use the build in VPN. The downside about this is that you cannot pick a country. And for example, if you are in the Philippines and you are trying to avoid a South Asian IP, they may give you an IP from Thailand, which would leave you with the same restrictions as with you own IP. (There is another pin in #tech-support about how to enable this).

ZenMate has a free browser plug-in, but its only free for 7 days: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zenmate-free-vpn%E2%80%93best-vpn/fdcgdnkidjaadafnichfpabhfomcebme 

Free Proton VPN

An example of a free VPN I tested for you guys is ProtonVPN. Here is how to use it:
- Go to: https://protonvpn.com/pricing 
- Choose: Get Free
- Create an account
- Confirm the e-mail or SMS
- Download and install the client for your operation system (Android, IOS, Windows, Linux): https://account.protonvpn.com/downloads  (NOTE: it may ask you to install .NET Framework for Windows and Webview2 Runtime).
- Login with the username and password you created in the previous steps
- In ProtonVPN chose a different county such as United States
- During the test I downloaded a 100mb file within a few seconds at 9 MB/s (That's plenty for Splinterlands)

Other suggestions I found, but didn’t use myself are:
- Atlas
- HideMe
- Windscribe VPN
- Calyx VPN

Examples of well-known paid VPN’s are:
- NordVPN
- Express VPN (I personally used this successfully on Android)
- SurftShark