How I Watch RTE from Outside Ireland
RTE stands for Raidio Teilifis Eireann and is the public service broadcaster for Ireland. It’s actually one of the oldest broadcasters around, they have been operating continuously since 1961. The Irish Government appoint a board to run the station, it is very near to Irelands version of the BBC.
It is certainly why it is missed by Irish citizens who move from home, and why many were so pleased at the announcement of RTE Player which is a similar version of BBC Iplayer. It allows you watch the majority of RTE content and programmes over the internet. Alas all the homesick Irish were to be disappointed when they tried to access the RTE Player from abroad, the dreaded Geotargeting stopped them.
Now some of you are probably not aware of this term, but ‘geotargeting’ plays an important part on what you access online. The most obvious example is when you go to Google, you will always be directed to the Google Home page related to your location e.g Google.com, Google.co.uk, Google.IE.
In this case it makes perfect sense, but unfortunately Geotargeting is also used to block access in many cases. It’s quite a simple process, everyone connected to the internet has an IP address to identify themselves. This IP address is registered and can be traced to a physical location, so all a web site has to do is look up the location of this address from a database and it can determine where you are.
This is what RTE Player does, it looks up your IP address and if it’s not registered in Ireland you won’t be able to access the content. BBC Iplayer does the same for Non-UK surfers, in fact most of the big media sites block access to their content outside their specific country.
But the truth is that this doesn’t stop people accessing the shows if they use a workaround. In the instance of RTE Player all you need to do is to connect through a proxy server that is registered in Ireland. When you connect throught the Irish proxy your IP address will be listed is Irish and RTE Player will work perfectly.
Now the methods you can use this depends on lots of things, if you don’t mind spending time tracking down and testing proxies then you can use free ones. The advantage is obviously the cost, however it can take a long time to find a new Irish proxy each time you want to view RTE. The free ones never stay live for very long either so it’s going to be an ongoing search.
I have found it simply takes too much time to find a free, fast and reliable proxy which is why I generally use a commercial one as they are fast and secure.
There’s more information here, on my US RTE post, on this blog.
Will a Secure Proxy Server Protect Me Online ?
It certainly can do, a secure proxy is a very important step in protecting yourself online. The problem is most people this all proxies are equally as secure, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that the proxies that are available online for free are amongst themost insecure proxies on the planet. They are generally a mix of misconfigured servers accidently opened up to the internet, hacked servers which people install proxy software on or worst simply traps to steal passwords and account names.
If you pick an insecure proxy, you’ll be doing more harm than good. The internet is full of identity thieves, some working with huge criminal gangs with plenty of resources. They have realised the huge gains and limited risks of electronic fraud and theft. The risks are minimal compared to the conventional crime and even less when you can set yourself up in a distant country with lax information laws and ineffective police. Electronic crime and identity theft offer these huge rewards, those rewards keep growing as a the communication revolution of the internet continues.
One of the main issues is fundamental to your browsing and that is that most of it happens in clear ascii text. So that’s everything that leaves your computer and travels across the web is instantly readable by anyone who happens to intercept it. Where can it be intercepted, well the most obvious is the ISP logs which contains a complete log of everything you do online. There are lots of other places of course but a favourite trick is the free anonymous proxy. It’s quite simple and very clever simply buy, rent or hack into a server, install some proxy server and them advertise it on the net as a free secure proxy server. It doesn’t take long before thousands of people flock to use the server and you have lots of clear data flowing through the server. Swicth it to caching mode or enable some logging software and you can record everything – user accounts, login details, passwords you name it.
A quick and simple way not only to steal personal data but to actually have people send it directly to you in the name of anonymity !
Remember always the adage – ‘you get what you pay for’ – proxy servers cost a lot of money to supply. A free anonymous proxy quickly gets very expensive, so why would someone pay a fortune to allow everybody to use a free anonymous proxy. Well the simple answer is they usually do it by mistake and accidentally leave the proxy open, or they do it on purpose and steal your details in payment.
Be very careful that the secure proxy server you choose to protect your browsing is a proper secure professional server not a free one run by a bunch of eastern european hackers.
There are lots of uses for a proxy such as watching TV Online
Here’s some great security resoures.
Take care and stay safe
Why do I Encrypt my Surfing?
It’s unfortunate but when the web was starting to get really popular in the 90s, we didn’t stop to think. The success of the interent was incredible and based on one super fast efficient protocol called HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol). Now HTTP is great but it does have one glaring ommission, the complete lack of any built in security. That’s right I mean nothing, it is in affect a clear text protocol so all the text transported is readable by anyone alongs it’s journey.
It’s why when my neighbour connect to the internet on his open wifi connection, I can see what he’s doing, which web sites he is visiting and pretty much all he does online. Fortunately some of his private stuff does happen over HTTPS – a slightly more secure protocol. It wasn’t seen as a problem in the early days of the internet but online crime is big business nowadays and many, many people feel they have a right to spy on us online.
As you sit at home and idly browse around the web, how do you feel that someone is keeping a list of every single web site you visit. That’s it a complete list of every single web site, every picture, graphic or video you download – is all in a single readable list. It’s an amazing amount of information and exists for nearly everyone in the logfiles of your ISP. Governments, police and intelligence services are all interested in this information which is why there are many directives in Europe and across the world making the ISPs keep his information for a record.
In the UK there are plans to transfer all this information to a central database which would be accessible to ‘selected agencies’. If this happens we can say goodbye to all privacy online, these ‘agencies’ will soon be checking out the web sites you visit and what you do online as a matter of routine.
I can see it now – nice interview Mr Jones, but could you explain why you downloaded two and a half hours of crossdressing videos on the night of the 22nd November last year. As our privacy is eroded, so does freedom of speech and expression. The ISP logs are already seized and monitored routinely in Europe and the USA, many less democratic countries simply run the ISPs themselves.
Nope there is a reason that I encrypt my browsing, it’s because my information is private and I don’t think people should be routinely monitored on the off chance that they’ve done something wrong.
If you want to read more about privacy issues and Encrypted Surfing, please visit my web site which has lots of information on surfing anonymously.