Indonesia is the planet’s fourth most populous country. Home to over quarter of a billion people, Indonesia’s internet usage is also on the rise. The over seventeen thousand islands of the country are a minor obstacle in this matter. Eighty-three million Indonesian inhabitants use the internet today, and this number is growing steadily. However, with Islam being a major religion, online content faces quite a number of restrictions. If you’re travelling there for scuba diving in Bali, to explore the capital Jakarta or climb mountains, you will certainly bump into geoblocks with your favorite streaming services. This article is about outlining important specifics about Indonesian internet and offering a solution to a more free and safe access there through the use of a VPN.
Best VPN Services for Indonesia of 2024
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Using a Indonesian IP
Indonesia is home to a vast cultural diversity within its borders and thus hosts many local websites and online services. This alone makes it worth connecting to the country. Yogyakarta is a very important artistic and cultural city that can equally provide a lot of information if you happen to be curious about Indonesia. Connection speeds however, are not the best. Furthermore, considering that if you use a VPN to connect to or from Indonesia, your connection speeds are a tad slower in general since encryptions need some resources. Despite the large number of users, Indonesia still lacks quality internet. Still, support for mobile devices is better. This is understandable, as nearly half of all internet connections in the country are made from such machines.
Indonesian Online Privacy Laws
The majority of internet users in Indonesia are below the age of 30. The government – consequently or not – treats content that these age groups most often view with increased attention. For example, social media sites are very popular among Indonesians. Therefore, more desperate measures are made against exposing sensitive private information and preventive measures are employed against discriminating people online. All forms of censorship and online restrictions are regulated by law; the Law on Information and Electric Transactions (2008) is a good example of this.
Internet Censorship in Indonesia
Censorship happens often in Indonesia. The main areas hit by such government activity are pornography (religion might be a factor here) and defamation. In fact, if you behave in a defamatory way on the Indonesian internet, you are potentially the subject of fines, with their dollars well into the five or six digit domains. Gambling isn’t allowed on the Indonesian internet either. Copyright infringement is also a question circulating around nowadays – Indonesia is not the best country for P2P and torrenting. However, it must be noted that not all ISPs operate the same way. Indonesia’s Internet Service Providers differ tremendously, resulting in a censored, but still mildly chaotic internet, as far as content availability goes. Nudity is often censored; foreign websites that might include bare skin, even for artistic purposes, have fallen victim to this policy. Reddit or Vimeo cannot be found in Indonesia by regular means. If you use a VPN however, you can actually access these sites via connecting to the internet with another country’s IP address (where the domains are allowed), or by using SmartDNS.
Streaming Services in Indonesia
Indonesia has mixed streaming availability. Spotify cannot be found here (but will be in the near future), nor can you enjoy music on Google Play (just like India, Indonesia and Google do not have the best relations). Apple Music is available though, and so are 8tracks and Guevra. In general, radio based music coverage is more widespread in the country than specific platform based audio distribution (such as SoundCloud or Bandcamp, both of which are available and popular). There is a local free music streamer in Indonesia, Ohdio. For film and moving pictures, your options are not that good. Netflix is not good to go in the country, and in the summer of 2015, 22 such websites – official and unofficial – were blocked. A free one, PopcornTime, is still available, though.
Free Indonesian VPN Trials
There are some concerns on our part about the lengths the Indonesian government goes in order to regulate online content. Therefore, we would like to advise you on three VPN services that fit the agenda of a freer internet. First up, if you are interested in P2P, take a look at BolehVPN. Almost all of the company’s servers support P2P and file sharing, and you can even subscribe to have them do SeedBox hosting and video game hosting for you. BolehVPN’s OS clients rely on the open source OpenVPN system, which is a little harder to set up, but nothing difficult.
Secondly, we would like to suggest ibVPN. This company has a huge variety of packages for you to choose from. Next to the regular VPN ones, you can also invest in the company’s own SmartDNS proxy, called ibDNS. If you are interested in unblocking and bypassing restricted content in Indonesia, we recommend this service. Furthermore, if you seek a better protected environment for your company, ibVPN can also assist you with plans specialized just for you. Lastly, for more general purposes, take a look at IPVanish. This company excels in all areas of service, which is great, considering that Indonesian internet users make connections from a variety of devices. IPVanish is supportive in this matter as well, with a vast range of routers on the table regarding device support. The company also favors SSL cryptography, and has a kill switch preinstalled in every application or client software of theirs.