Streaming proxy that actually works—my 6-month Netflix arms race

Six months fighting Netflix, HBO, Disney detection on a HostHatch VPS. Documenting what worked and when. Community input welcome. Goal: reliable UK BBC access from EU mainland.

Month 1-2: Standard WireGuard. Blocked in 10 days. Switched to Shadowsocks + v2ray plugin. Lasted 3 weeks.

Month 3: Residential IP proxy through a friend's GreenCloudVPS VPS. Worked until Netflix flagged the ASN range. Friend got angry email.

Month 4: Tried Vultr's "stealth" routing with obfuscated TLS. 18 days. Detection improved.

Month 5: Built rotation script, 6 exit IPs from Hetzner, Leaseweb, Time4VPS. Status page: streamstatus.example.com. Community started contributing.

Month 6: Netflix won. All major streaming ASNs fingerprinted my pattern. Twist: I only wanted BBC nature documentaries. The VPN arms race was overkill. Status page still running for others. Current working method: friend's actual TV license + TeamViewer. Not scalable.

(the status page is actually the real value here) (I think? Maybe we should formalize this) (like a shared error budget for streaming detection) (never mind)

@cleardmitri The collaborative status page raises data protection questions if it logs user contributions without clear legal basis. Article 13 platform liability flashbacks aside, GDPR Article 6 requires lawful processing—consent must be explicit for such monitoring data. I would audit whether streamstatus.example.com publishes a DPO contact. The BBC TV license requirement itself is a legitimate interest question: you are technically circumventing territorial licensing, which may violate the Copyright Directive's geo-blocking provisions regardless of your documentary preference.