Understanding the Account Home

We aim to make our service as easy to use as possible. However, given the nature of our product, you will come across terms like DNS, VPN, and IP addresses, which might be new to some of our users. While it is not a requirement to understand the underlying technology, it might help you do bug tracking on your own if you have a better understanding of what is going on.

We strongly recommend spending a couple of minutes reading below. However don’t forget that you can always contact us if you run into issues – we are here to help.

The 3 Check Marks

In your account home you will find a table with 3 different settings:

• Subscription Status
• IP Address
• DNS Setup

In most cases, you will need 3 green check marks in order to use our service. Yes, I did write most cases – I will come back to the exceptions later.

Subscription Status

This is where we check if your account has an active subscription to our service. If you don’t have a green checkmark it means that your subscription has run out and you will have to upgrade or renew your subscription. In that case press the upgrade button.

IP address

Each device connected to the Internet has an IP address, which is a unique number that you inherit from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). This number is needed for your device to communicate online. In order for our servers to identify you, we need to know your current IP address. We use the public IP address from your Internet connection to identify you and not the IP address from your local network. For more information about how do distinguish between the two, please see this article. 

Some user will get a new IP address frequently from their Internet Service Provider (ISP) while others will have the same IP address for months if not years. If you all of a sudden experience problems with our service it’s a good idea to log in to your account and check if you have gotten a new IP. In that case press the “update IP” button, which will appear.

DNS Setup

DNS stands for Domain Name System and this is the part which confuses the most users - and understandably so. You actually use DNS on a daily basis when surfing the Internet. However, you have never had to deal with this before as you have been using your ISPs DNS servers automatically.

The DNS is responsible for telling your device what server to connect to when you type in a web address in your browser or use an app connected to the Internet.

DNS - The Two Setup Methods

There are two different methods of using our service. 

• Method 1: Configure each device you want to use with our service.
• Method 2: Configure your router to use our service. Every device connected to this router will then be using Unlocator.

Now back to the exception mentioned earlier. When loading the account home we will check if the device you are using to visit the account home is using our DNS servers. So what happens if you have set up your Apple TV to use our DNS and not your computer? In that case, you will get an error in your account home under the DNS check. This does not mean that your Apple TV has not been set up correctly but merely that your computer is not set up to use our service.

Another example would be if you have configured your router to use our service. If you then visit your account home and get a green checkmark in the DNS check then any other device connected to the same router is ready to use with Unlocator.

DNS Status Help Chart

So please keep the above in mind when visiting the account home. You will always need to have a green checkmark in “IP address” and “Subscription Status” and most cases also in “DNS Setup” as well – however, it’s important to understand when it’s ok to have a “bad” DNS check.