Use a VPN to access unauthorized resources

Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to access a particular website or server on the internet, but it was blocked for people in your country? Oh, yes, this can be very embarrassing. In this post, I will explain how the blocking is done and provide you with a way of avoiding this by using a VPN.

To understand how this works, it is based on your public IP address. Each continent and country has been assigned a particular IP address range by an organization called IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). When you connect to the internet from your country, your public IP address reveals your location. By blocking the public IP address range assigned to your country, a website or server can prevent people from your country from accessing it.

To check your public IP address, your internet service provider (ISP), and the country where you are located, you can go to the website https://www.whatismyip.com/fr/. This will provide you with the necessary information.

whatismyip.com info

When visiting the website https://www.whatismyip.com/fr/, the results show that I am currently located in Libreville.

Use VPN to change my location

Now, if we want to access a website that is not allowed from my country, I can use a VPN to change my location and allow me to access the required website as if I was in that country.

For the purpose of this post, we are going to use a simple VPN called Anonymox that can be added as an extension on our Chrome browser. We can simply add it as a normal extension and activate it. I have chosen the US as the location, so I can easily access websites in the US.

Anonymox Activation

Let’s again use https://www.whatismyip.com/fr/ to check our current location. The results show that we are now located in the US.

whatismyip output

Conclusion

In this post, we actually understood how we can use a VPN to have access to some websites that are not usually allowed in the country where we live. Anonymox is just one example of a VPN that allows us to do this easily. We also explained how the blocking can be made and the entity responsible for assigning IP addresses globally. As usual, if you find it useful, clap and follow us for more.