I guess this is more of a general expat tip than an FS-specific one, but I hope you’ll find it useful. I plan to do a couple of expat/FS tech posts in the coming week or two.

There are plenty of websites that require a US IP address to use: going to get your free, annual credit report; watching the latest Lost episode on ABC.com; checking in on Heroes on NBC’s Hulu; or streaming that rented movie from Netflix. Heck, even using iTunes’s USD store often requires a US IP address.

Obviously, a lot of this stuff is not work-appropriate. Uncle Sam has a ligitimate complaint when you’re using his bandwidth to watch the Sound of Music, even if it is off work hours. So you have to do this from home. But how do you get around it?

Hotspot Shield has installers for both Mac and Windows. Basically, it creates a VPN to a U.S.-based proxy. This not only provides increased security, it makes it look like you’re in the US. Some sites may have it registered as a proxy and will block it, but you’ll have more sites available than you would have. Note: you need to have a pretty hefty connection speed. Expect it to be about 50% slower than your normal connection…plan accordingly.

There’s also the Vidalia Project, which essentially does the same thing but has servers all over the place, so if you needed a UK-specific IP, you could get that, too.

Finally, if you’re really hard pressed, you could set up your own VPN. This requires a loving friend in the US to host your computer, but has the benefit of letting you hook up a slingbox, too. I’ll cover this more in a different post.

NOTE: I am currently in the US and have not tried these solutions (I had different work-arounds at post). Also note that the Department blocks access to these sites on OpenNet as part of their no-proxies policy. You’ll have to look from your private computer.