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Are there any restrictions on access to gambling sites in your region? This is easily and securely solved with Virtual Private Network technology. In this article, I will tell you what VPN services are used for PokerStars and any other poker sites.
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Online casinos represent one of the fastest-growing types of entertainment, attracting more and more fans of this pastime. Sports betting is known to attract sports fans from all over the world, as well as users who want to try their luck and play the lottery.
The interest of poker players increases in proportion to the growth of their stacks. While on vacation between tournaments, most professional poker players prefer to sit at the tables of online poker rooms.
Unfortunately, online gambling platforms aren’t available in all countries. This may be due to regional laws restricting the spread of gambling, or it may be due to censorship to protect morality or religious rules.
We will look at the main VPN services that allow you to play poker online most efficiently and confidentially and generally bypass almost any restrictions on the Internet.
* Free VPNs cannot provide 100% player safety. In addition, the IP addresses of such companies are often blocked.
Keep reading if you want to know more about secure online gambling anywhere in the world. Here are some important details that will help you save time and make you feel safe. Besides, I will describe each of the 10 VPN services tested for gambling in more detail.
Disclaimer: CoolTechZone.com respects the laws of those countries where there are restrictions on access to gambling sites. We don’t welcome the violation of these laws or call for it. We aren’t responsible for your decisions to protect your location and activity, which must not violate the applicable laws of the country where you are located.
Now all the traffic of your device is reliably protected, the addresses of the visited sites are hidden from the Internet provider, and your IP address has changed to the address of the VPN server.
There are many examples when you aren’t allowed to open any gambling site. In particular, several betting sites don’t allow visitors with an IP address associated with a particular country to enter.
You may experience blocking from both your ISP and the site. And possibly, you’ll encounter both obstacles at the same time.
It can be problematic for players to visit such sites using proxies or anonymizers. I recommend using a VPN for all online privacy and security issues.
So, take a look at two main reasons why PokerStars and other gambling resources may not be available.
Reason # 1
Even in online poker, users are dealing with real money. And, with due diligence, at a profit. Authorities often restrict citizens' ability to receive rewards from sources that are beyond their control.
Reason # 2
Another reason could be money laundering, which is believed to take place in online gambling. People who gamble are often not intruders. But the authorities cannot control the flow of money through gambling sites.
What is the result?
Online poker sites are often unavailable and in some countries such as Australia or the United Kingdom, you may not be able to access certain online poker sites.
Thus, you should understand that privacy is the number one reason for using a VPN for online gambling.
You may have already thought about this:
How do I pick a good VPN for online gambling? What should I look for when searching?
I decided to help you and give you some advice and describe the key nuances that are important when choosing a VPN for online gambling.
#1. Data encryption
The use of a virtual network for gambling is further complicated by the fact that all games (online casino games, bets, lotteries, poker) involve money and its transfer.
Thus, such a tool shouldn’t only get rid of geographic restrictions, but also carefully encrypt all traffic, including your bank accounts and currency transfers. Fortunately, the top-rated online casino VPN can provide its customers with all the features, including 100% protection of transmitted personal data using AES-256 encryption.
#2. Hiding IP address
An excellent online casino VPN service assumes that your true address is being hidden from any third party, replacing it with the IP address of the VPN server. This feature makes you anonymous to the websites you visit (more precisely, they don’t see your real IP and therefore cannot determine your real location).
#3. Tunneling
Plus, a good VPN for poker or betting has many server locations around the world, pushing the boundaries of your virtual location. When protecting your banking data or worrying about not leaking confidential information, you should know that the best VPN for playing online casinos creates a protective tunnel using a special protocol. When your traffic (all your traffic) goes through a tunnel, it isn’t only encrypted, but also placed in one virtual channel, which makes it impossible to isolate traffic going to a specific gambling site.
#4. Lack of logs
When talking about anonymity, you should also remember that all your activities are visible to the VPN provider. It is imperative to make sure that it doesn’t store this data in any way. I recommend choosing VPNs where logging isn’t possible through the use of diskless servers. Such a service, for example, is ExpressVPN.
Which VPN service is the most versatile and supports data protection, location masking, doesn’t keep logs, and is loyal to gamblers?
I bring to your attention the 5 best VPNs that have passed all types of security tests, have the most adapted functionality for delicate tasks, have a good reputation, and don’t monitor their users.
Comparison of the main features of VPN services for gambling:
| Service | Ranking (out of 10) |
Number of countries supported |
Encryption |
Mobile device support |
Price (monthly) |
| ExpressVPN | 10 | 94 | AES-256 | + | $6.67-12.95 |
| NordVPN | 10 | 59 | AES-256 | + | $4.13-11.95 |
| Surfshark | 10 | 61 | AES-256 | + | $2.49-12.95 |
| CyberGhost | 9 | 90 | AES-256 | + | $2.25-12.99 |
| PIA | 9 | 45 | Can be fine-tuned | + | $2.69-9.95 |
ExpressVPN is perfect for online poker. This is a serious service with an impeccable reputation and a huge number of positive reviews.
A distinctive feature of ExpressVPN is its stable high speed, which allows not only to reduce possible delays to zero when using a virtual private network but also to increase connection speed due to direct connection to the server bypassing many intermediate nodes that are involved in an unsecured connection.
ExpressVPN has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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NordVPN is a powerful tool to bypass any blocking. It will change your IP address as reliably as possible and will pack all transmitted and received data using the “bulletproof” AES-256 standard.
A distinctive feature of NordVPN is the ability to work even in countries with Internet censorship and when a regular VPN is blocked. This is achieved in two ways at once: using the ultra-modern WireGuard protocol and supporting obfuscation, i.e. masking special traces that are left by conventional VPN protocols.
The service has been successfully tested for all platforms, including Chrome OS.
NordVPN has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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Third on this list is Surfshark, the best budget VPN. This fairly young provider (founded in 2018) has truly become one of the best in two years.
Surfshark uses many of the cutting-edge technologies that make it as safe as possible to visit online poker rooms and surf the Internet in general.
The provider supports not only standard features but also allows you to build chains of VPN servers, block tracking, and bypass blocking of VPN protocols.
Surfshark has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Also read:
If for some reason the previous 3 providers didn't suit you, then take a look at CyberGhost, the largest VPN service of 2021. It offers incredible 6300+ servers and is one of the leaders in terms of the number of countries supported.
For gambling, CyberGhost additionally has two interesting technologies:
Tracking blocking is useful when you are looking for poker or other gambling sites and don’t want to leave traces.
NoSpy servers differ from ordinary servers in that they aren’t accessible by employees of hosting companies or other third parties. These servers are under a special control of CyberGhost VPN.
CyberGhost has a 45-day money-back guarantee.
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Private Internet Access (PIA), due to its versatility, has some parameters that may be of interest to poker players.
The most important thing is the established crystal clear reputation of the service. PIA is known as one of the most confidential VPNs out there, as there is no known case of it leaking personal information to users to law enforcement or other government agencies.
The service's credibility was shaken somewhat in late 2019 when it was bought by Kape Technologies, which owns CyberGhost. It is believed that in the past this company has distributed adware.
Private Internet Access has a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Also read:
Is it possible to avoid registration on the sites of VPN services, additional expenses, and still change your IP address?
Yes, it is.
Is it possible to play poker or other online gambling games with a free VPN without interruptions of the connection, with good connection speed, with an acceptable choice of countries, without problems with blocking IP addresses and without frequently confirming that you are not a robot?
No, this is currently impossible.
Warning: Free VPNs shouldn’t be used as a protection tool in matters involving money and delicate tasks such as gambling. The IP addresses of such services are known to serious online casinos and poker rooms, and connection failures associated with overloading VPN servers can lead to the leakage of personal data, including the real IP address.
Read on to learn about the 5 free online poker VPN services that performed best in testing and had the least downsides.
The best free VPN for gambling is ProtonVPN or, more precisely, its free plan.
The service itself is known as a reliable virtual private network service provider. It has highly secured servers in a data center in Switzerland and doesn’t keep logs. But the free version doesn’t have access to secure servers. Moreover, the speed is severely limited, which can cause unexpected crashes during a game.
Another advantage of free ProtonVPN over other free VPNs is that there is no traffic limit.
Disadvantages of free ProtonVPN are low speed, 4 available countries, compromised IP addresses (like all other free services).
Signup needed.
Another serious player in the VPN market, Windscribe, also has a good reputation for keeping its customers safe. But the free version is severely limited. Moreover, not only in terms of speed and choice of countries like ProtonVPN but also in terms of the monthly traffic limit, which is 10 GB.
One of the advantages is the support for “invisible” VPN protocols (it wasn’t possible to confirm their work due to the too low speed of their performance) and the ability to launch their app without signing up. However, with a decrease in the traffic limit to 2GB per month.
The disadvantages of free Windscribe are that the speed is too slow for a good game.
Suitable for paid usage, which removes all restrictions.
Hide.me also has a 10GB per month limit but provides it without registration. That is, no registration is required to use it. At the same time, it has noticeably worse connection stability and a smaller selection of countries (4 versus 10 for Windscribe).
Disadvantages of free hide.me are frequent connection failures at all locations at once, low speed, compromised IPs.
The next VPN, TunnelBear, is free of speed and stability issues. But... only 500MB of free traffic will be available to you per month. To continue working, you will have to switch to a paid tariff.
For those who value the comfort of use, I will add that TunnelBear has a very colorfully designed animated app.
The disadvantage of free TunnelBear is an incredibly small monthly bandwidth limit.
Signup needed.
And the last VPN service that I want to consider in the article on secure access to online poker rooms and casinos is Hotspot Shield. It's hard to find a more popular provider with hundreds of millions of customers. But is its popularity really justified?
I don't think so. After all, it provides free access to only one location with, of course, a compromised IP address and at the same time has a traffic limit of 500MB per day.
Disadvantages of free Hotspot Shield are one location in the Netherlands and low speed.
No registration required.
Once you decide to gamble on the Internet, think of purchasing a subscription for one of the best VPNs for this activity.
Follow this instruction one by one to purchase a VPN subscription:
Remember! The subscription for a VPN service costs some money. How much? Check it in the tariff you will choose.
Is it too much complicated? We suppose it is not really…
Of course, the Internet is too much censored by the severe authorities of some countries. And they block not only visitors of certain websites restricted by them, but ones providing VPN services are vulnerable to this, too.
Keep your head up, if you fail to get to a VPN website!
Work for searching the one that is not restricted as there are dozens or even hundreds of them on the Internet. Keep on looking for the one you need! Finally, you will be lucky to find one unblocked for your entry.
Before you obtain a VPN, read about the legal system of the country the VPN provider is actually situated, because in some countries the authorities have a legal right for asking local VPN providers for the necessary information about their users. They can’t but convey it.
You should also avoid the countries, which are the members of 5 eyes countries. The agreement involves such states as the US and UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The agreement has been extended to 14 eyes countries.
But, of course, if you are not planning to commit a misdeed when gambling online, there is nothing to be afraid of.
Nevertheless, a VPN would be good enough for making your online activity more secure. A VPN encrypts the data which goes through the server and that helps to prevent from cyber attacks on the network.
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