How to access sites abroad with a VPN

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Using a VPN can make it seem like you're right back at home

Access sites abroad with a VPN
(Image credit: Future)

Using a VPN to access sites when abroad is one of the most common VPN uses, and it’s a basic function pretty much any service can provide. However, if you pick a top-quality virtual private network, you’ll have a much more reliable browsing experience with a huge range of locations to choose from.

Accessing restricted sites can be very useful if you’re on holiday or on a business trip – while you sometimes might be able to scrape by, in many situations a VPN can save you a whole lot of hassle. Below, we’ll explore a few uses you might find handy next time you’re abroad.

What can I access with a VPN?

With a great VPN, the internet is your oyster – but on your travels you’re most likely going to want to access general websites you regularly visit when you’re back home, your online banking, and probably whatever streaming services you subscribe to.

airplane in the sky

(Image credit: Kaotaru)

Regular browsing

If you regularly visit certain news sites, for example, you might not be able to access them in the same way you usually do if you're abroad. Perhaps the site's in a different language, and often outside home territories content is limited and needs a subscription to read.

If you’ve got a VPN installed you’ll be able to virtually relocate yourself to your home country and browse your favorite sites as if you were sat on your own sofa. If you’re from the US or the UK, pretty much any VPN will have servers back home, but if you’re from a smaller country or somewhere outside of Europe or the Americas, you might need a service with a good VPN server variety to get you connected back home.

Access online banking

While abroad you’re likely to want to access your online banking, but if you haven’t informed your bank of your trip (it’s easy to forget!) you might find yourself locked out of your account for ‘suspicious activity’. At the least that’s going to involve an unnecessary phone call to the bank, and at worst it could leave you stranded somewhere without access to your money.

While this could be avoided by telling your bank, if you’re a frequent traveler it might just be easier to spend less than $2.50 a month on a VPN like Surfshark. And, if you do that, not only will you never have to worry about getting locked out of your bank account again, but you’ll get all the other benefits that come with a VPN too.

Another bonus of using a VPN for banking abroad is due to the fact you're probably more likely to be using public Wi-Fi. Unsecured connections are prime places for hackers and data thieves to target people, but using a VPN encrypts all your traffic, meaning your bank details will stay absolutely private, even if someone does intercept your connection.

Unblocking streaming services

One of the most popular uses for VPNs is unblocking streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer and many more. Netflix delivers different shows to people in different countries, and some are only available in one – for example, iPlayer is only available in the UK.

If you’re going on holiday you’ll probably still have some downtime in which you’ll want to watch TV, but without a VPN your favorites might not be available. If you get a great streaming VPN and connect to a server back home, though, you’ll be able to watch what you want, when you want.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also do the opposite from your sofa – connect to a server overseas and see what shows are available there that you can’t access normally.

Whatever sites you want to view – news, your online banking, Netflix – a VPN can add value and save you hassle when trying to browse the web as usual when you’re overseas.

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Mo Harber-Lamond
Mo Harber-Lamond
VPN Editor

Mo has been rigorously testing, reviewing, and analyzing VPN services at Tom’s Guide for more than five years. He heads up the three-person Tom's Guide VPN team, and is passionate about accessibility: he believes that online privacy should be an option that’s available to everyone. NordVPN and ExpressVPN are the products he uses most on a daily basis, but he experiments weekly with all the top services, evaluating their privacy features, connection speeds across various protocols, and server reliability – among other things – so that he can make confident VPN recommendations that are backed by data. To see his latest advice, head over to Tom’s Guide’s best VPN and best free VPN guides.