Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can’t win

Netflix’s solution to its problem is about to create a huge new one — for millions of people who aren’t trying to trick the service out of a Canadian show in the US. One year ago, UK-based GlobalWebIndex estimated that 54 million people use VPNs to watch Netflix every month (Netflix declined to comment to Variety on GWI’s numbers).

What Netflix is asking (er, forcing) its customers to do is, well, insane from a privacy and security perspective. That a company might insist you use 123456 as your password because it solves an internal problem for them sounds … ludicrous. Except that’s pretty much what Netflix is doing by disallowing widespread use of a security tool as critical as a VPN.

Engadget: Why the war on VPNs is one Netflix can’t win »