Shared payment accounts . This is the solution that Netflix has adopted to continue fattening its coffers . After years of tolerating them, now you will have to pay an extra 5.99 euros per month for each non-living user with whom you want to share your Netflix account. What’s more: you will have to specify where you are going to watch Netflix from mainly to avoid sharing accounts without going through the box. However, there are ways to “cheat” the Netflix algorithm. One of them: create your own VPN at home .
As we can read in the Netflix Help Center, “Netflix accounts are designed to be shared in the same household , that is, between people who live with the account holder.” While other platforms do not impede “family sharing”, Netflix does want to restrict the use of its services to a single address. Therefore, if you share Netflix with your parents or your partner and you live in different places, you will have to pay extra .
However, if you want to cheat the system, you can always set up a VPN at home to continue using the shared Netflix accounts from anywhere and as if you were always at your “home location”.
A VPN, remember, connects you to the internet with a different IP than the one that actually corresponds to you. As? Making all incoming/outgoing traffic from your device pass, before reaching the server, through one or more intermediate points. For example:
- Imagine that you send an email using a VPN. Its information will leave your computer, will reach an intermediate server and this will redirect it to the mail provider in question.
- Said mail provider will only be able to see the IP of the intermediate server, which is the one that establishes the connection. Therefore, the IP of the real sender (the computer from which it was redacted) is therefore hidden.
This system can be used for countless things . But, in the case that concerns us, the idea is to create a VPN at home that redirects all the traffic of the computer in which it is configured to an intermediate server located in the location that has been defined as the main one in Netflix. In this way, you will be able to continue using the shared Netflix accounts without paying more. The service will believe that the IP is always the same, even if the devices are located miles apart.
And, in case anyone has the doubt: Netflix will not use the GPS of your mobile phone to determine the location. It says so explicitly on their website. It will only and exclusively use the IP address of your connection.
What does Netflix say about your shared accounts and VPN connections?
Netflix talks about VPN servers in their Help Center. “Using a VPN is not compatible with the Basic plan with ads,” she says. However, it does not say anything about the other plans. It does warn us that “by using a VPN, you will only be able to watch series and movies for which Netflix owns the global rights ”.
Our purpose, however, is to make the service believe that we are connecting from the main location even though we are not there. That is, configure a machine to act as a VPN server and use our home IP . About that at the moment, Netflix has not said anything.
On the other hand, it seems that Netflix’s verification of the location will not be constant. That is to say: we will only have to use the VPN from time to time.
Brief introduction to home VPNs
VPN services, free or paid, work by offering tens, hundreds, or thousands of VPN servers all over the world . You choose which one to connect to. From now on, your internet access will be done through it, so your real location, IP and MAC address will not be visible.
What we are going to do to continue using shared accounts on Netflix from anywhere is to create our own VPN server at home. To do this, you only need a machine that acts as a VPN server and install and configure the necessary software. Then, you will have to connect from another machine or device with a VPN client, which can be external or come integrated into the operating system. The server machine can be your own computer or any suitable device, such as a Raspberry Pi or a router . The positive is that a VPN server does not require a lot of power.
Next we are going to give two examples to configure a VPN at home and be able to continue using shared Netflix accounts wherever you are . The first is the fastest and easiest to install and configure. On the other hand, we will also explain the traditional method to set up a VPN server on a Windows PC.
Create your own VPN at home to continue using shared accounts on Netflix
Starting your own VPN server at home is not a complex task. We’ve seen it before. So let’s take a shortcut using the Tailscale application . It is free for personal use and supports up to 20 connected devices with the same user. If you want more users and other advanced features, you can go for the paid version. In addition, it can be installed on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android, both for use as a server and as a client .
To use Tailscale, all you have to do is install it on the devices you want to connect to each other. For example, a PC or Mac that will act as a VPN server and a mobile device, iPhone or Android, that will connect to it first. The installation does not have any secret. Follow the instructions and, when finished, you will have to create a user account . This account will allow you to manage your devices and your VPN network from the browser and from the installed applications. You can use your Google or Facebook credentials to go faster.
Once you have installed Tailscale on your PC and on your phone, to share the same IP you will have to activate a function called Exit node . By default, Tailscale creates a private network to connect your devices and share files. But if you want to pass internet traffic from a device through your home VPN server, you’ll have to do it using the Exit node function .
The same IP for your VPN devices
To activate the Exit node you will have to go to the Tailscale menu of the PC or Mac that acts as the VPN server at home and check Run Exit mode in the Exit node submenu . Then you will have to give the approval in the administrator console. You can access it from the browser. The shortcut to the address is in the Tailscale menu . In the Machines section of the administrator console, you will see the devices connected to your VPN network. One will indicate Exit Node . Click on the dropdown on the right, go to Edit route settings and check the Use as exit node option .
Once you have your VPN server at home with the Exit node function activated, to use it you will have to go to your second device, the one that acts as a client. Open the Tailscale app , activate the VPN service, then click on the dropdown menu and click on Use exit node… A green indicator will appear saying something like Using exit node .
To check that your VPN at home with Tailscale works well because if you ask for your IP on an online page, both devices will have the same address. Yes indeed. On the second device, disconnect WiFi and access via mobile data to check that the Exit node function is working correctly and redirects traffic through the VPN server . Now you can use shared Netflix accounts from different places by accessing from your own home VPN.
The traditional method to create your own VPN at home with a PC
Let’s turn a PC into your own VPN at home . You can continue using it for other things without problems. You will simply have to keep it on when you need to connect to the VPN server. So better to use a desktop PC . As for the operating system, the more current the better. For example, Windows 10 or Windows 11. So you can continue using shared accounts on Netflix.
Windows has default support for a VPN protocol, PPTP. Although the companies that offer VPN services today use more current and secure protocols such as OpenVPN , implementing it has its difficulties. So let’s go easy. In the future you will always be in time to make the leap to OpenVPN or other similar protocols.
To start setting up our VPN at home from Windows , we will have to change some things in the network configuration of the operating system. Physically, we don’t have to touch anything on the PC. Yes indeed. It will help if you have it connected to the router via Ethernet , since the speed you will get will be higher.
- Let’s go to Windows Settings. We enter the Network and the Internet
- Another option is to go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Resource Center…
- We look for the option Change adapter settings
- Press the F10 key to see the hidden menu
- We select File> New incoming connection…
- We choose the VPNor similar option
- We create an account to access our VPN server at home
- To do this, click on Add someone…
- We indicate a username, password, etc.
- In the next window, we mark that the connection will be Through the Internet
- In the next window, we mark Protocol… IPv4and click on Properties
- We mark the option Specify IP addresses
To know what range of IP addresses we must indicate to Windows to do VPN at home, we will use the ipconfig command from the Windows Command Prompt or Terminal . You can open it by pressing Windows Key + R at the same time and typing CMD and pressing Enter . When entering the ipcconfig command you have to note what your “Default Gateway” is. That IP is that of your router. Normally it is 192.168.1.1.
So going back to Specify IP addresses , we are going to indicate a range of IP addresses that can be 192.168.20 to 1.92.168.30. With eleven IP we will have more than enough, since we will only share our Netflix account with a few people .
Open the ports for your VPN at home
Once the range of IP addresses has been entered, click on Accept> Allow access and we will have our own VPN server at home ready to work. But now we will have to make changes in the Windows firewall and in the router so that the connection to the VPN server is fluid and does not give problems with the ports .
On the router, you will need to open TCP port 1723 . To do so, it will depend on each router. It is normally accessed from a browser with the address 192.168.1.1. Look for the option to open ports and configure the one that we have indicated. If you also have to indicate the local IP of your PC, you will know it with the ipconfig command looking for IPv4 Address .
In the Windows firewall, you will have to go to Windows Security > Firewall and click on Allow an app through firewall . There you will have to activate the Routing and remote access option . It can change depending on whether you are on Windows 10 or Windows 11. In either case, check both the Private and Public option
