How do I make it appear that my IP address is coming from one country while I'm located in another?
I live in Germany and some websites (like Hulu or Youtube) don't work because my IP isn't in the US. How do I get around this? Do I have to use a proxy or something?
Moderator note
Super User does not endorse nor defend any activity which may be used to circumvent local/state/national laws.
You have to Google for "free http proxy", some of the lists you get as a result classify geographically the proxies, find one of those and then choose a US located proxy.
Afterwards set your browser to use as HTTP proxy your selected proxy (what are the steps to do this depends on the browser you use). Some proxies work better than others and some just don't plain work with some big traffic sites, so you might have to try a few (unless you get a trusted proxy from a friend or company.)
Beware that all your received and submitted data could be stored and even modified in transit by a malicious proxy, you cannot trust at all the data received, or that the other party has received the data as you have sent it.
For this reason I'm reluctant to recommend a particular server or list of servers, just use the search term in Google and see for yourself which one you'd trust.
For HULU, I don't think that trust would be much of a problem, but if you forget to disable the proxy and then navigate to your bank disaster might ensue... so be warned.
Aditionally, you will almost certainly be breaking the site terms and possibly some laws (I'm not a lawyer).
You could also try Anonymouse.org.
When you go to the website, you just click your language, (English or German), and then enter the URL of the website you want to visit. It works to get to Hulu, and this website is also a handy tool if you want to visit a website that a filter is blocking.
As Vinko said, you will be breaking the TOS, and probably some laws.
Adding a proxy will definitely slow down the browsing, especially if the proxy you use is used a lot.
TOR is an option, but there are many others.
Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis
the best thing to do is to get shell account somewhere in US and do
ssh -D 1080 IP.IP.IP.IP
then configure your browsers to go through 127.0.0.1:1080 (SOCKS4)
There is an article explaining exactly how to do this on Lifehacker:
IP Hider Accesses Hulu, Other US-Only Content from Outside the US
This depends why you want to hide you IP address (as this will measure how untraceable you are wanting to be).
If you rent a virtual machine from one of the man VPS providers that are out there and run a web (HTTP/HTTPS) proxy (or any other sort of proxy fot that matter) any connections made through that proxy will appear to come from the VM (and therefore from the country it is hosted in). But you will not be completely untraceable as the sites you are looking at will see the IP address of the VM so if you are planning to do something risky (if, for instance, you live under an oppressive regime and are planning a political statement) this may not offer you the protection you require as someone tracking you down can track you as far as the VM and the provider hosting it who will know who+where you are from your payment records.
For proxying all traffic instead of specific protocols like HTTP and HTTPS you'll need to setup some sort of VPN arrangement rather than just a protocol proxy. In both cases (protocol proxy and VPN) you might find services out there that will mitigate the need to set one up yourself, but you would need to ensure that you trusted the service provider as they will be able to monitor your traffic.
If you are looking to be more untraceable then you will need to use an anonamising network like Tor - but these will never be "fast" because of their nature so will fail that stipulation in your question.
If you can be more specific about what you want to proxy (web traffic to/from some sites?, all web traffic?, all internet traffic?, ...), where you are and where you want to appear from we might be able to give you more specific recommendations or pointers to tutorials. Also, knowing why would be helpful. If you are looking to circumvent local restrictions of some kind then that may complicate things.
This also depends on the method the service defines the IP to location mapping.
Some services will use a strict IANA definition which is by network number. Others use an geo-locating service, which is a table that is periodically updated.
I'm from Australia and like to use HULU too.
I just go to proxy.org and take my pick.
To trick sites into thinking you are in the United States, you could try Tunlr. Instead of using a proxy, or even a VPN, Tunlr is a DNS server that re-addresses some packets to make it seem as though they originate from a system in the US. As such, it does not intercept page data, cookies, etc.
It is mainly used for streaming video sites (Hulu, Netflix, etc.) and from what I can gather of how it works, I do not believe it would work with any arbitrary site by default, but you could always ask them to other sites to their support if it does not.
Caveat: Not surprisingly, using Tunlr (or any other workaround) to circumvent the geo-restriction is almost guaranteed to be a violation of the site’s terms of service with all the consequences that getting caught brings.
To trick sites into thinking you are in other countries, you can use a proxy from HideMyAss.
