How to unblock Facebook with a VPN
13
October

Let’s say you’re based in the Middle East or Asia and your access to Facebook is blocked. Most people know by now that using a VPN is the easiest and most secure way to unblock these sites and access them freely. So how does it work? How does a VPN let me access Facebook and other blocked sites?

There are two main ways in which some countries block certain websites:

  1. DNS poisoning. This term refers to the following censorship tactic: For example, you want to access facebook.com in your web browser. Your computer first needs to find out the IP address of one of Facebook’s servers so it can connect and show you its website. To find out the IP address, your computer will do a “DNS lookup” by talking to your ISP (Internet Service Provider). It asks effectively “what is the IP for facebook.com?”. In a country where Facebook is blocked, the DNS server will then send an intentionally falsified response back. Instead of telling you the correct IP for Facebook, it’ll tell you the wrong, or “poisoned” IP. That’ll usually send you nowhere and create an error message in your browser. How does a VPN help? The VPN switches you to DNS server in an outside country without censorship. As soon as you connect to our VPN, we switch your computer to use DNS servers that are located very close to our datacenters. In other words, by connecting to ExpressVPN you switch your computer to using “clean” DNS servers that don’t do any poisoning. When you want to access Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, or any other blocked sites, we’ll tell you the true IP address.
  2. Blocking access to specific IPs. In addition to DNS poisoning, some countries and ISPs will also block network connections to the IP addresses of the sites they’d like to block. So even if you have access to a non-poisoned DNS server and find out the correct IP address, you may still not be able to connect to it without a VPN. The VPN lets you connect to anywhere you want by creating an encrypted network tunnel from your computer to our VPN servers. The censors can’t see what’s being sent through the tunnel and where it’s going. For example, your computer sends a request to a Facebook IP. The request will first go through the encrypted VPN tunnel, reach our servers, then proceed from there directly to Facebook via the uncensored Internet. Facebook’s response then flows in the reverse direction back to you.

Point #1 is one key difference between a VPN and a simple web proxy. The latter doesn’t update your DNS servers and therefore doesn’t guard against DNS poisoning.

Bottom line: A VPN protects you from both methods of censorship. If your access to Facebook is currently blocked, get a VPN and you’ll be able to access it again.

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Some data about the reliability of Express VPN servers
13
October

Hi, it’s Ben from the ExpressVPN engineering team. I’d like to share a bit of data about the reliability of our VPN servers. Our network is distributed across several different data-centers around the globe:

  1. Los Angeles
  2. Seattle
  3. San Francisco / San Jose
  4. Washington, DC
  5. London
  6. Paris
  7. Amsterdam
  8. Nuremberg, Germany
  9. and even Hong Kong (though we only use that data-center for customers who specifically need to be in Hong Kong. Speeds from Asia are typically best accessing servers in Los Angeles. Even though the physical distance is greater, the network pipes are wider across the Pacific, giving you faster speeds.)

We use automated systems to constantly monitor each of our servers, and we get woken out of bed if anything ever goes wrong. Each server is typically available 99.5% of the time, and many of them even 100% on a month-to-month basis. Since we have multiple servers even in the same data-center, that means customers very rarely, if ever, notice a server being down. On top of that, customers can choose which datacenter to connect to, so even in the rare event that one datacenter is unavailable, there will be several other backups to connect.

Bottom line: over the past year our total service availability has been far above 99.9%. Here’s the full data report from our monitoring partner pingdom.com if you’re interested.

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How our money-back guarantee works
15
October

We want you to be 100% satisfied with our service. We’re so confident you’ll like our VPN that we’re offering a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. Even if you run into problems after signing up, we’re available 7-days per week to help you get them fixed and make you feel comfortable using the VPN.

If for any reason you’re not satisfied within 30 days of signing up, just send us an email to let us know you’d like your money back, and we’ll give you a full refund.

If you paid with credit-card, the refund will show up on your credit-card statement within 5 business days. For Paypal, the funds will be returned to your Paypal account. You can then log into Paypal and withdraw the funds back to your bank account or credit card from there.

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What is a VPN proxy and why do I need one?
07
September

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. It’s a technology that performs two main functions:

  1. Encrypts all your network traffic, protecting your data from spies and censors.
  2. Gives your computer a new network address (IP address), which can also be in a different country than your physical location. This is useful when you’d like to browse the Internet as if you’re based in a different country, such as when you’re based in a country with censorship and want to browse freely as if you’re in your home country.

The terms “VPN” and “VPN Proxy” are interchangeable. The word “Proxy” simply clarifies that the VPN forwards your network traffic. The VPN acts as a proxy funneling your network traffic from your computer, through the VPN servers, then on to its ultimate destination.

So why would anyone need a VPN proxy? See here for our list of top reasons to get a VPN.

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Top 6 reasons to get a VPN
01
June
  1. Gain access to blocked or censored websites. Trying to access Facebook but it’s blocked? Skype from the Middle East? Get a VPN and you’ll be able to unblock Facebook and browse to any websites you wish. The VPN allows you to freely use the Internet as if you’re based in the US or Europe.
  2. Speed up censored websites. Some websites may be only partially blocked in your country. You may be able to get to the home page of some foreign news sites, but accessing specific articles might be very slow because your ISP is first doing a text-search for any censored topics in the content of the article. A VPN avoids all this. The network traffic will flow through an encrypted channel directly to your computer, out of sight of any censors, and will therefore load up faster than without a VPN.
  3. Protect your privacy. Especially when working at public Wifi spots, it is easy for others near you to spy on your network traffic. By using freely available software called a packet sniffer, anyone can listen in on your network traffic. Unless the website you’re browsing uses https, they’ll be able to see and record everything you’re doing, including potentially taking your passwords. A VPN prevents this. The VPN encrypts all of your network traffic, keeping it safe from the eyes of spies. So even if you’re based in the US or Europe with uncensored Internet access, it’s a good idea to connect to a VPN when using public Internet spots.
  4. Securely make online purchases when based abroad. When you’re traveling or living abroad and want to make an online purchase at an e-commerce site in your home country, that site may reject your order because your IP address (your computer’s network address) is in a foreign country. They wrongly assume that the order is fraudulent because of your foreign IP address. A VPN fixes this problem by giving you an IP address in your home country, making it much more likely that the e-commerce site will accept your order.
  5. Avoid getting locked out of your Paypal or bank accounts because of logins from foreign IPs. Online banking systems like Paypal regularly lock customers out of their accounts when they log in from foreign IP addresses. For example, let’s say you have a Paypal account in the US. When you log into that account from a foreign country, Paypal may assume that a hacker abroad stole your paypal password and therefore locks down your account. You’ll need to go through a time-consuming process of sending utility bills to paypal in order to prove your identity and restore access to your account. A VPN avoids all of this by giving you an IP address in your home country. Remember to connect to the VPN before logging into Paypal and you’ll be safe.
  6. Access geographically restricted sites. Some popular websites like hulu.com or pandora.com restrict their users to certain countries only. When trying to access these sites from abroad, you’ll get an error saying the service isn’t available for your country. That’s where a VPN comes in. Connect to the VPN first, it’ll give you an IP address in your desired country, and thus allow you to access these websites.
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