De nombreux fournisseurs de sécurité propose a VPN service - SecureLine d'Avast, SecureLine de Kaspersky, PhantomVPN d'Avira - et Norton Secure VPN (the product formerly under the name of Norton WiFi Privacy) is the entrée de l'entreprise dans this domain. We were interested to see how the service stacked up against specialized competition, but the NortonLifeLock website made no real effort to tell us. How many countries do you support, for example? Which? Can you choose specific cities? How many servers are there? All a secret, apparently. The service "uses bank-grade encryption," the site boasts. What algorithms? Good question. Ok, what protocols are supported? Do you get an off switch? Does Secure VPN unblock Netflix? No, sorry, you won't find information like that here.
Norton Secure VPN subscription options:- Norton Secure VPN for € 39,99 per year
The site offers a few details: there are apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, there are plans to protect 1, 5, or 10 devices, and the tracker lock is released for free. Later, after installing the service, we discovered that the network covers 31 countries (without individual city selection) in Europe and North America, with other places including Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa. The service uses the fast and secure IKEv2 protocol, but does not provide any guidance on how to manually make it work on other devices. It only works in apps. There is a strict no P2P policy in place, and we mean strict strict. If Secure VPN detects that you're downloading a torrent, even something completely legitimate like the latest Ubuntu ISO, it immediately closes your connection. Despite the extreme lack of details on the main website, Secure VPN has some new features worth noting. The latest version of Windows adds a kill switch to protect your connection if the VPN goes down, for example. You can now connect automatically when the system boots. There's even a new split tunneling feature that lets you choose which app traffic should be routed through the VPN and which should use your regular connection. This makes it a much better performing application than the previous version, and it's a shame Norton doesn't put more (or ``none'') effort into describing this on the main website. (Though Norton doesn't make a big deal about it, you can find details of new versions on their Product Update Announcements blog. Click Norton Secure VPN in the Filter: Tags area on the right and you'll get an overview of all the improvements. .)
Monthly and annual plans are available (Image credit: Norton)
Norton Secure VPN review: plans and pricing
Norton Secure VPN is available as a stand-alone product, but it also ships with certain editions of the Norton 360 security suite, and the pricing structure makes it clear that this is what NortonLifeLock wants you to buy. Secure VPN's monthly plan is reasonably priced at €7,99 to cover up to five devices (€9,99 for ten), for example, and its yearly plan looks cheap at an equivalent €3,33 per month. At least, until you realize it's only because you get a 50% introductory discount and the price goes up to €6.66 upon renewal. To put this in perspective, Norton Secure VPN asks you to pay €40 for the first year of service, €80 each year thereafter; Pay €80 for the much more powerful Ivacy and you'll instantly get five years of cover. But wait: there is another way. Buy Norton Secure VPN as a bundle with Norton 360 Deluxe and you'll get antivirus for up to 5 PCs, Macs, mobiles and tablets; a firewall for PC and Mac; parental controls, a password manager, 50GB of cloud backup space, and more. But it's the same €3.33 per month for the first year of the annual plan, and only slightly more expensive at €8.75 on renewal (€105 per year). Compare that to Bitdefender's similar Total Security 2021, for example, and Bitdefender is slightly cheaper ($3.33 per month for the first year, $7.50 on renewal), but it only includes a limited VPN of 200MB per day per device. Getting the full VPN requires an upgrade to Bitdefender Premium Security for €6.25 per month for the first year, €12.50 when you renew, giving the Norton package a very good deal. A free trial is available if you sign up on mobile, and even if you decide to buy, you're protected by an exceptionally generous XNUMX-day money-back guarantee. Well, that's the idea, anyway: the exact rules vary depending on where and how you buy the product. The best advice here is to read the fine print carefully.
Norton Secure VPN can block ad trackers, but the service keeps some logs of its users (Image credit: Norton)
Confidentiality and registration
The Secure VPN website claims that the service provides a "logless virtual private network that neither tracks nor stores your activity." It's a good start, although there are no more details on the first page. to "What's a VPN without a log?" The support article vaguely states that the service
recopila información sobre los suscriptores con fines de comunicación, datos en dispositivos móviles y uso general del ancho de banda '', aunque no 'does not record information about where you go on the Internet'. L'article nous renvoie à sa politique de confidentialité globale pour en savoir plus, mais il s'agit d'un document encore plus général qui vise à couvrir l'ensemble de la gamme Norton (`` VPN '' n'apparaît pas une one time.) Norton Secure VPN's true privacy policy states that the service collects or accesses your IP address or location (anonymized); device name, type, operating system version (for mobile devices) and identifying serial number; a running total of used bandwidth and very basic diagnostic information to help troubleshoot (an error status code, for example). There are no big surprises here. Locations are collected or displayed, but not associated with your account, ostensibly to help the Secure VPN app choose the server closest to you. And while the service may collect enough data to identify a particular device, if you don't associate that device with a session (connection dates and times, incoming and outgoing IP addresses, etc.), and Norton doesn't log visited domains or the resources consulted, this information cannot compromise your privacy. While this is good news, it's still more of a daily than some. And since Norton Secure VPN hasn't undergone a security audit, unlike some competitors, you have to take their word for it. While we have no reason to doubt the company, having its systems publicly audited would help reassure potential customers.
Install on pc
Signing up for a service through PayPal usually means you don't have to provide your full name and address, but not with Norton Secure VPN; you must submit all your information, whether you pay with PayPal or card. After dumping our money, the website offered us the option to download an app for our current device or send a download link to any other (Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS).
Installing the Windows Norton Secure VPN client was not an easy process (Image credit: NortonLifeLock) Installing the Windows client can be surprisingly tricky, especially if you purchased the VPN as part of Norton 360. We followed the VPN download link secure from our Norton account page, but this insisted on installing the full 360 app instead. This is a problem because it doesn't have any of the extras or settings you'll get with the standalone version (login at startup, automatic logout, split tunneling).
Unfortunately, the first NortonLifeLock support agent we spoke to was not very knowledgeable about the product (Image credit: NortonLifeLock) We started a support chat session to ask for advice, but the agent did not show much product knowledge, for example , referring to Secure VPN as Wi-Fi Privacy, the old name for the service that hasn't been used for over a year. year. But he quickly referred us to the dedicated VPN support team, who provided us with the proper download link, and moments later we were ready to go.
Norton Secure VPN offers apps for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS (Image credit: NortonLifeLock)
applications
The Norton Secure VPN Windows app has a new, simple and straightforward interface that even the greenest VPN novice will understand right away.
Here's the new UI for Norton Secure VPN on Windows (Image credit: NortonLifeLock) Click the On button and the app will connect to your nearest server, eg. You can also choose from 31 countries in the list of locations. And a simple settings box includes options to start the app and automatically connect when Windows starts, to turn on Kill Switch, to block ads and trackers, or to set up split tunneling (specify which apps don't have traffic. They won't be routed through from the VPN, but will use your regular connection instead). The app also handles standard logins and logouts quite well. This allowed us to connect to nearby servers in seconds, most of the time, and we used desktop notifications to tell us when we were protected and when we weren't.
You can choose your preferred country but not the city when connecting to Norton Secure VPN (Image credit: NortonLifeLock) Let's be clear: this is still a commodity. The list of locations does not include cities, for example; no server load time or ping figures to help you choose the best location for you; no favorites system for faster reconnections; there is no protocol option (this is IKEv2 only) or low-level connection control. But the latest version is a huge improvement over what's come before, and we think there will be more features to come. Strangely, the app does not provide any way in the interface to close it completely. Closing the application window reduces it to an icon in the system tray and there is no right-click option, Exit. (Actually, there is no right-click option. More on that later.)
The kill switch is a new addition to Norton Secure VPN (Image credit: NortonLifeLock) We usually test an app's kill switch now, but Norton Secure VPN protects your connection much better than most providers, and our tests regular...