If you bought YouTube Premium in a country where it’s cheap, using a virtual private network (VPN) could cancel your subscription. As Android Police previously reported, several people who used this trick in recent days reported that their subscriptions were automatically canceled.
The workaround is to use a VPN to change your location to a country where YouTube Premium is offered cheaply. For example, YouTube Premium, which gives you access to ad-free videos, YouTube Music, and offline downloads, costs $13.99 per month in the United States, but only $1.05 (ARS 869) per month in Argentina. But now it seems YouTube is cracking down on subscribers who don’t live in these countries.
In a statement, YouTube spokesman Paul Pennington said the company has “systems in place” to track users’ locations. “In instances where the signup country does not match where the user is accessing YouTube, we’re asking members to update their billing information to their current country of residence,” Pennington said. He didn’t say, however, whether YouTube would start automatically canceling subscriptions if fake locations were used.
Given that YouTube has already started cracking down on ad blockers, it’s no wonder the platform is considering cheaper premium subscriptions.