Google is cracking down on VPN-enabled adversary

The dance appears to be up for YouTubers who obtained cheaper premium memberships by masking their location with virtual private networks (VPNs).

In the United States, Google charges fees to individual users $14 per month For YouTube Premium, which limits ads and offers some additional features. But this price varies widely across regions, and Some Reddit users They say they were once able to get better deals by pretending to access the service from other countries, PCMag And TechCrunch mentioned. Google charges the equivalent of $3 a month or less in places like Argentina, India, Turkey, Ukraine and the Philippines, according to Robot body. However, this workaround deal appears to be toast.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter, but support staff at the internet giant reportedly told PCMag that YouTube recently began canceling premium plans for “accounts identified as containing false subscription country information.” a YouTube Help The page directs potential subscribers to turn off their VPN if they get an error while subscribing to Premium.

More importantly, VPNs have a variety of uses, and Google once sold one of them; the Google One ceased to exist in AprilApparently because it wasn’t popular. Some people may turn to VPNs in search of discounts, but others rely on VPNs to access content and features that simply aren’t available where they live.

The apparent campaign is the latest in Google’s efforts to extract more dollars from the video site. Google also recently She stepped up her crackdown on ad blockers By making YouTube videos unwatchable for users of services like AdBlock.