Choose the best VPN for Australia

Australian service providers monitor everything

According to Senator Scott Ludlam, 243,631 warrants were issues to obtain telecommunication logs between July 2010 and June 2011.

And in 2013, light was shed on a key issue with internet companies. State, territory, and federal law enforcement authorities can legally access a variety of so called “non-content” data. This may not come as a surprise, but it’s certainly worrying since all ISPs have a mandatory data retention period of two years. Otherwise they can expect a fine of up to two million Australian dollars.

This fine incentivizes ISPs to log a lot of your data, such as:

• Your IP address
• Time and duration of your internet connections
• Your browsing history (this usually applies to carriers)
• Volume of your downloads and uploads
• Location and other geographical data
• Your emails
• Date and time when you’ve sent emails
• Data volume of your email attachments
• Metadata of your devices

In short, everything you do online is heavily monitored. And to make matters even worse, in 2018 a bill was proposed to help authorities with the “challenges posed by ubiquitous encryption”. In translation, Australian authorities are concerned about their citizens using any means of data protection but are mainly focusing on traffic encryptions.

A VPN – short for virtual private network – is used to encrypt your entire internet traffic, redirecting it through a secure tunnel, rendering your ISP blind when it comes to your online activity. It’s no wonder the government has been trying to crack down on VPNs, even if the bill did not pass. For those wondering if VPN software is legal in Australia, the answer is yes. For the moment, at least.

Why you need the best VPN for torrenting in Australia

Piracy is an issue that’s taken very seriously in Australia. ISPs are vigilant about torrenting copyrighted material and are keeping their eyes on all their customers for such infringements.

This is why the Australian federal court ordered ISPs to block many popular torrent sites, like The Pirate Bay. Torrentz, TorrentHound, isoHunt and all mirroring sites. The streaming service SolarMovie is also no longer accessible to Australians.

This decision was made after more than 50 copyright holders sought bans on piracy websites within Australian territories. Among them were big names, like Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox.

Even though the “three strikes and you’re out” rule is a financial burden to internet service providers; authorities are still trying to push it. And in case you’re wondering, there’s also a penalty for those that are caught pirating copyrighted material. Individuals can face a fine up to AU$117,000 and the amount goes up to five times more for corporations. Repeated offences can also make you eligible for a prison sentence, according to the Australian government website.

The bottom line is that the Australian government is working relentlessly to crack down on sites that are used to distribute copyrighted material. Even Google stepped in to call the decision too rushed and expressed concern at the 500 sites being blocked by ISPs on a weekly basis.

The anti-piracy campaign is well underway. And the bad news doesn’t end here.

Break all international streaming restrictions

If you have a Netflix account, you probably already know that a significant part of this service’s streaming content in blocked in Australia. That’s not fair. Even more so when you consider that the Online Goods Tax needs to be paid on top of every single streaming service subscription you own.

Not to mention the streaming services that are completely off-limits to Australians, like BBC iPlayer, Hulu, Crunchyroll or HBO Now. This leaves you in a tough spot. You can either give up on your favorite entertainment shows or visit illegal sites. It's also bad for creators that are robbed of a well-earned fan base. And you risk facing legal consequences for streaming copyrighted content from shady websites.

This is all determined based on your IP address. Streaming services rely on this type of information to identify your location and decide which content will then be available to you.

However, this is no longer an issue with CyberGhost VPN. With the help of our virtual private network, we hide your IP address, and replace it with one from our system. This means that these services will no longer be able to tell your real location anymore and their full catalogs of streaming content will be made available to you.

Unblock Streaming