Howdy guys,
I’ve been successfully using a VPN to download my podcasts without ads, or with ads in a language that I’m learning so at least they add some value to my life instead of pinging me straight awake as I’m dozing off.
Lately though The Guardian has been seeing through my veil.
Has anyone got any idea what meta data might be going with my download request that tips them off to my true location?
Do you have location on? Although I’m not certain how that would come into play with anything requesting the media file.
If you re-download an episode from a few days ago, do you get ads within wheres before no ads?
From the Subscription, choose an episode that now has ads in it. Long tap the episode, select Share. One of the options is the Media address - share that to the clipboard. Open a browser, paste it in. Play it in a media player - does it have ads?
Otherwise, they have some really sophisticated detection going on. Share the subscription URL and I’ll try a few.
One other thought… are you updating this feed off-VPN and then doing downloads on the VPN?
When is your VPN on and off?
Thank you. All good things to try. I will do some more experiments and report back.
After a bunch of experiments, would you believe that my fkn VPN app is buggy? “Split Tunneling” sent nothing over the VPN. FYI it was Proton VPN.
So a big thank you for your thoughts, a big thank you to AntennaPod, and a big finger to Proton VPN.
Isn’t that the whole point of split tunneling? Ignoring the VPN for all connections except the ones that go to some specific servers?
Cute. But backwards. At least as far as my experience goes. The world goes via the VPN unless there’s a specific exception.