Our bank insists we should turn off the vpn when trying to access our account as they sometimes cannot verify our id/mac address to make sure it really is us accessing our account. This happens approximately 50% of the time at login; other times there is no problem. Having been hacked a number of times through no fault of our own, this seems counterproductive. Any thoughts?
Your bank is not the only website that blocks access to VPN IP addresses.
A VPN does not block or filter any web content. It is the website you are trying to access that is probably blocking access from known VPN IP addresses. This is done for copywrite, legal or political reasons. There is nothing a VPN provider can or should do to bypass the site’s protection for its content.
Here is a How to Geek article on this. Why Do Some Websites Block VPNs?
The reason you can sometimes access the bank with VPN active probably has to do with the IP address of the VPN server being used by Norton. It can change with each time you use the VPN. Sometimes the website you are using may not have flagged that VPN IP address, yet.