When browsing the internet looking for a VPN solution, it’s amazing to see the list of countries where those VPN providers are operating. Do you need the servers listed in the VPN country list?

My experience

Let’s consider for example ibVPN (the solution that I am using), I am using the USA & Canada package. I mainly chose this package since I am servicing customers based in these countries and I want to make sure to replicate what my customer experience would be.

They just recently offered a $2 promotion for adding UK and Ireland based presence to their customer’s packages. So I can’t help but wonder if it’s worth it. At this stage, the question isn’t really about the price. Well, I suppose you’ve got some serious business that can fund it, or you are already willing to use some part of your daily meal to fund that VPN solution. In fact, the main question that I am asking myself is the following: why would I need the UK or Ireland-based IP addresses?

Why would you want thousands of IPs?

Now let’s take another example of one of the most-widely-known VPN providers for end-users: they are claiming to be able to give 13500 IP Addresses in 32 countries, with 168 VPN Servers- that’s a huge collection of endpoints and IP addresses, especially when considering how scarce IPv4 IP addresses are nowadays. As a customer, why would I want to get 13500 IP Addresses?

Are you a spammer?

Although the following may not be the typical profile of this kind of services, I think spammers would love such VPN country list solutions. Why is that? It is widely known that by doing their activities, spammers will need to use different IP addresses, though pretending that the same message does not originate from the same computer.

So let’s consider a forum poster spammer, for example, he can post one message to a forum post, switch to another IP address and use another profile, then repost another message on the same post, and so on and so on. As you can see, having thousands of IP addresses available can come handy for this type of profile.

What does it mean for you, as a regular, non-spammer, user?

Do not forget that you’ll also be using the same IP addresses that those spammers would have used, so long as you are using the same provider. That remains true since there are no special packages offered to special customers. If you want to verify it, just send an e-mail request to the sales support of any VPN provider that you are likely to work with.

So at some point in time, you may end up using one IP address that may have been blacklisted because one spammer user has been flagged while using it. At this stage, it’s really up to the VPN provider to whitelist that IP address, there’s not much you can do from your end for this case. The only available option is to flag it to your VPN provider and get them sort it out.

In the meantime, you can disconnect your VPN service, flush all of your browser cache and cookies, and reconnect again with the same VPN provider, hoping that you’ll be assigned a new IP address that hasn’t been blacklisted.

Do you use the servers in the VPN country list? Are you using the extra IPs? What for? Let us know in the comments below.