Italy is a European country and home to one of the greatest cultures of all time, the Romans. This highly developed country has the eighth largest economy in the world and supports 61 million people. Italy is also known for its temperate climate, it’s great food, and sadly now, it’s anti-piracy laws. These new laws are among some of the most strict in the world. That makes Italy a great place to use a VPN.
Of course, there are various groups that worry about the ramifications of these new laws as well as the fundamental shift in the way the laws are written. Some of these groups worry about the ways the laws could be applied to political writing. Still, others are worried about the infringements on the user’s personal rights and feel if their rights could be overlooked in this manner, what does the future hold?
| Rank | VPN Service | Price | Visit | Server Locations | No Logs | Browser Extensions | Smart DNS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  | $6.67 |  | 160 |  | | |
| 2 |  | $3.49 | | 87 | | | |
| 3 |  | $2.69 | | 65 | | | |
| 4 |  | $2.75 | | 80 | | | |
| 5 |  | $5.20 | | 76 | |
The new laws go after the major players in the market. If a violation is found, a notice is published and sent to the court. Once the court rules, the ISPs have 3-5 business days to take down the offender and block the site from access, even if the site is outside of Italy. Failure to comply with this ruling in time will result in a fine of 250k Euros per incident. The law does not specifically mention that ISPs will pay all the costs of the website blocks, but that seems to be the case. Though, if you would still like access to these sites, you could do so by using a VPN.
Here are some reasons to use a VPN in Italy. As you can see, ISPs are required to block certain websites that it feels are harmful to copyrights. If you believe in net neutrality, you want the freedom to go to any site you wish. Being told you are blocked from sites sometimes leads to people finding alternative methods. A VPN will allow you access to blocked content.
Whereas Italy requires quite a few protections from private organizations in data retention, the Italian government seems to be excluded from these rules. They can monitor you for any reason they feel they need to and may retain data on you for up to six months. With overreaching monitoring rules like that, you would want to secure your data by using a VPN.
So how does a VPN work? That part is easy. Your first step would be to download the software. Once you have done that, pick a country to connect to and push the connect button. What that will do is create a secure and encrypted connection to a server in another country, therefore protecting your privacy. By picking the country you wish to use, you can get around geo-blocking or ISP site blocking. Even though Netflix has stated they were planning on launching an Italian version in October, you don’t have to wait. If you wanted to watch Netflix in the US, providing you had a paid subscription, all you would have to do is connect to a server there and gain access to things as if you were physically in the US. The same could also be said for any other region or area you wanted to connect to.
Hopefully by now, we have made it clear that there are substantial reasons for using a VPN. The options you pick though depend specifically on purpose. That said, we do have some specific ideas in mind for Italy. The choices here all offer secure encryption levels, though, using the OpenVPN protocol will be your best option whenever possible. If you are keen on trying one of the many streaming services, OpenVPN (UDP) would be your best choice for streaming. For mobile networks, you can check into other protocols as well including IKEv2 and L2TP for privacy protection.
If you want to secure your data or unblock content, our suggestion would be to use IPVanish. They don’t keep logs and have a kill switch feature, so it will make sure your browsing is secure. If you want to get into Netflix early or try others, IPVanish is still your best option. They have the fastest network in North America and Europe and offer a mobile client as well, so you would only need to connect, and you would be able to stream from big markets even before Netflix officially arrives. Needless to say, the number of titles in Italy will be abbreviated in comparison to the US Market, so keeping the service would not be a bad idea.
If your goal is just to watch geo-restricted content, our suggestion is either IPVanish or ExpressVPN. Both encrypt traffic, but ExpressVPN also includes SmartDNS with their VPN to allow you access to blocked content without the speed reduction of encryption. However, if you have high-speed internet, the extra layer of protection is well worth any speed deficit that you might encounter. As long as it does not affect the quality, there is no reason to be reckless at the cost of security.
Swing by our top 10 VPN services list if you want other choices, but we imagine you will be fulfilled with our choices. We chose these services over others based on speed, price, regional locations, and security. We also searched for providers with a good network of VPN servers in the EU.
Reliable VPN providers will secure your data, as well as providing fast networks for streaming high definition content from other countries. Preserve the free and open characteristics of the internet with a VPN. No matter your reasons for using one, you should be the one to decide what content is acceptable. Protect your privacy and unblock channels from inside Italy with a VPN.