How to get an Italian IP address with a VPN

Looking to protect your privacy, hide your activities from anyone watching, or access Italy-only services as you travel? The easiest way is to get an Italian IP address with a VPN; below, we’ll walk you through the process from start to finish.

How to get an Italian IP address in five easy steps

First, you’ll need a Hotspot Shield Premium or Premium Family account
Download the Hotspot Shield app. Remember, you can install it on as many devices as you like but can only connect five at the same time
Log in and choose a server in Italy
After a few seconds, you’ll be connected and the screen will change to show relevant info like your new IP address, session length, and peak speed
That’s all there is to it – you now appear to be browsing the web from Italy. Not only that, but your traffic is encrypted, meaning it can’t be read by hackers, your ISP, or anyone else who might be watching

Why should you use a VPN in Italy?

It might surprise you to learn that your Internet Service Provider knows all kinds of information about your browsing habits. For instance, they can see every site you visit and how long you spend there. Not only that, but your traffic can tell an observer whether you’re streaming, torrenting, or gaming. With a VPN active, though, your traffic is encrypted, rendering it unreadable and preventing your ISP (or any other snoopers) from gleaning any useful data.

It’s easy to forget that some services are only available in specific countries. For instance, if you go abroad, you won’t be able to stream RaiPlay or DMAX. There is an easy solution, though: simply choose an Italian VPN server to get an Italian IP address. Afterward, you’ll be able to securely access all of your usual Italian services, wherever you are in the world.

Cybercriminals are constantly refining their techniques and actually tailor their approach based on your location. For instance, Italians are much more likely to be targeted with a mobile banking Trojan than users in other countries.

Hotspot Shield helps protect you by scanning websites for malware, identifying phishing sites, and blocking access to time-wasting spam sites. These features are available in every version of the software, making it easy to stay protected on-the-go. At the moment, Hotspot Shield blocks more than three million shady websites, though this list is always growing.

Which Italian server is best for you?

You’ll usually find that the closer your VPN server is, the faster and more reliable your connection will be. Some VPNs only have a single location to choose from, which means you’ll often be forced to compromise on speed to get an IP address from the country you want. Not us, though:

Hotspot Shield currently has servers in two Italian cities:

Rome
Milan

If you’re traveling somewhere in between these cities or looking to get connected ASAP, you can also just choose our “Italy” location. This will automatically select the best available server.

Hotspot Shield is the best VPN for Italy

Some VPN providers place restrictions on how you use their service. Perhaps they forbid you from torrenting or only allow you to stream on specific servers. You might even find that they fail to honor a refund request because of how many times you connected.

Hotspot Shield is different. Our users can freely switch between servers and torrent as much as they like. This works the same way regardless of if you’re in Italy or a country with strict online censorship like China. We also have specific servers that are optimized for streaming and gaming, so there’s no guesswork or stress involved: you can just connect and dive straight in.

High-speed Italian servers

It’s hard to overstate how big of an impact your internet speeds have. Slow speeds lead to laggy video, dropped connections, and just a poor experience overall. Now, while most VPNs will reduce your speed to some degree, we’ve taken steps to minimize this loss. First, we tweaked our network infrastructure, making sure that our connections are as efficient as possible.

Next, we created a custom protocol called Hydra. Speed was one of our top priorities, and the test results reflect this; Hotspot Shield was found to be the quickest VPN on the market by Ookla, the world’s leading speed testing service. In fact, we were more than twice as fast as the VPN in second place. Of course, we’re not taking anything for granted and are always looking for new ways to push our performance even further.

How to stream Italian TV with a VPN

There are all kinds of internet restrictions. Some are country-wide (such as the UAE’s ban on video-messaging services), some are region-exclusive (you can’t watch RaiPlay outside of Italy), and some are more local (your workplace might block access to Facebook).

A VPN can help you access your favorite sites, no matter what kind of blocking is in place. After all, once connected, your traffic is hidden, which means the web-filtering software can’t see that you’re trying to visit a site that’s been blacklisted. This makes it easy to stream Italian channels like RaiPlay, DAZN, Now TV, DMAX, or La 7 as you travel.

How to get a new IP address in Italy (or anywhere else)

Just follow these steps to get an IP address from Italy using Hotspot Shield:

Open Hotspot Shield and sign in
Click on the arrow in the Virtual location box to see a list of available servers
Type “Italy” (without quotation marks) into the search box. Alternatively, you can scroll down until you see Italy in the list.
Click the Italy button to be shown a list of available server locations. Hover over your preferred location, then click the Connect button that appears on the right.
You’ll now be connected to a server in your chosen location. Once the screen changes to display your new Italian IP address, you’re free to browse the web, safe in the knowledge that your activities can’t be monitored.

Frequently Asked Questions

What can I watch with an Italian VPN?

There’s a huge amount of content that’s only normally available if you’re in Italy. Of course, securely accessing Italian streaming platforms is easy if you know how. Here’s a short list of Italy-only services that you can stream with the help of an Italian VPN server:

Netflix Italia
DMAX
La 7
Mediaset Infinity
Now TV
Discovery+
Cielo TV

Do I need a VPN if I live in Italy?

There’s no such thing as too much security. After all, there’s no way to know for sure whether your local wifi hotspot is as well protected as it claims, and no guarantee that websites which claim to encrypt your traffic actually do so in a meaningful way.

It’s also worth noting that Italy is a member of the Fourteen Eyes security alliance. In other words, if any of the other 13 signatories chose to, they could surveill your activities and share details with every other member. As such, it’s a good idea to use a VPN whenever you can. This will keep anyone, even the government, from seeing what you get up to online.

What else can a VPN do for you?

VPNs are great for keeping your browsing habits private, but they’re useful for several other things too. For instance, you can use them to bypass throttling, since your ISP can no longer tell that you’re streaming or torrenting. VPN users are also free to access whatever sites they want while on public wifi, and to log into their online banking from abroad without fear of having their account temporarily locked down.

Providers are increasingly taking a more active approach to online security. Instead of just encrypting your data, you’ll find some VPNs now also scan for malware, prevent phishing attempts, and direct you away from shady sites. In other words, these services are becoming more useful each and every day.