I have turned Norton VPN off. With the VPN on, when I try to use Thunderbird with the VPN on to download my mail it says my IP address is not valid. When I turn the VPN off, everything works fine. I also have issues with some other sites like SSN. At this point it's just too much trouble to turn the VPN on and off so I leave it off.
The SSN site I meant is the social security login page. You can get to the website but not allowed to log in with a VPN. As far as Thunderbird a split tunnel might work but after checking unless I'm on vacation or out of town and on a public network I am going to forgo the VPN.
fwiw ~ as test:
Norton 360 Secure VPN enabled + Current region: Auto
Sign in with Login.Gov => secure.ssa.gov => okay
The SSN site I meant is the social security login page. You can get to the website but not allowed to log in with a VPN. As far as Thunderbird a split tunnel might work but after checking unless I'm on vacation or out of town and on a public network I am going to forgo the VPN.
Hello @aliendancer
Did you try Split Tunnel for Thunderbird?
What website is SSN?
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/8557630
When Should You Use a VPN?
Circumventing Censorship
[...]
Dodging Surveillance
[...]
Torrenting
[...]
Streaming
[...]
Public Wi-Fi
[...]
https://www.howtogeek.com/779091/5-things-you-should-use-a-vpn-for/#when-should-you-use-a-vpn
Who needs a VPN service and why?
https://us.norton.com/blog/privacy/what-is-a-vpn
What Is a VPN, and Why Would I Need One?
https://www.howtogeek.com/133680/htg-explains-what-is-a-vpn/
Don't use VPN services.
No, seriously, don't. You're probably reading this because you've asked what VPN service to use, and this is the answer.Note: The content in this post does not apply to using VPN for their intended purpose; that is, as a virtual private (internal) network. It only applies to using it as a glorified proxy, which is what every third-party "VPN provider" does.
There's also this article about VPN services, which is honestly better written (and has more cat pictures!) than my article.
Why not?
Because a VPN in this sense is just a glorified proxy. The VPN provider can see all your traffic, and do with it what they want - including logging.But my provider doesn't log!
There is no way for you to verify that, and of course this is what a malicious VPN provider would claim as well. In short: the only safe assumption is that every VPN provider logs.And remember that it is in a VPN provider's best interest to log their users - it lets them deflect blame to the customer, if they ever were to get into legal trouble. The $10/month that you're paying for your VPN service doesn't even pay for the lawyer's coffee, so expect them to hand you over.
But a provider would lose business if they did that!
I'll believe that when HideMyAss goes out of business. They gave up their users years ago, and this was widely publicized. The reality is that most of their customers will either not care or not even be aware of it.But I pay anonymously, using Bitcoin/PaysafeCard/Cash/drugs!
Doesn't matter. You're still connecting to their service from your own IP, and they can log that.But I want more security!
VPNs don't provide security. They are just a glorified proxy.But I want more privacy!
VPNs don't provide privacy, with a few exceptions (detailed below). They are just a proxy. If somebody wants to tap your connection, they can still do so - they just have to do so at a different point (ie. when your traffic leaves the VPN server).But I want more encryption!
Use SSL/TLS and HTTPS (for centralized services), or end-to-end encryption (for social or P2P applications). VPNs can't magically encrypt your traffic - it's simply not technically possible. If the endpoint expects plaintext, there is nothing you can do about that.When using a VPN, the only encrypted part of the connection is from you to the VPN provider. From the VPN provider onwards, it is the same as it would have been without a VPN. And remember, the VPN provider can see and mess with all your traffic.
But I want to confuse trackers by sharing an IP address!
Your IP address is a largely irrelevant metric in modern tracking systems. Marketers have gotten wise to these kind of tactics, and combined with increased adoption of CGNAT and an ever-increasing amount of devices per household, it just isn't a reliable data point anymore.Marketers will almost always use some kind of other metric to identify and distinguish you. That can be anything from a useragent to a fingerprinting profile. A VPN cannot prevent this.
So when should I use a VPN?
There are roughly two use cases where you might want to use a VPN:
- You are on a known-hostile network (eg. a public airport WiFi access point, or an ISP that is known to use MITM), and you want to work around that.
- You want to hide your IP from a very specific set of non-government-sanctioned adversaries - for example, circumventing a ban in a chatroom or preventing anti-piracy scareletters.
In the second case, you'd probably just want a regular proxy specifically for that traffic - sending all of your traffic over a VPN provider (like is the default with almost every VPN client) will still result in the provider being able to snoop on and mess with your traffic.
However, in practice, just don't use a VPN provider at all, even for these cases.
So, then... what?
If you absolutely need a VPN, and you understand what its limitations are, purchase a VPS and set up your own (either using something like Streisand or manually - I recommend using Wireguard). I will not recommend any specific providers (diversity is good!), but there are plenty of cheap ones to be found on LowEndTalk.But how is that any better than a VPN service?
A VPN provider specifically seeks out those who are looking for privacy, and who may thus have interesting traffic. Statistically speaking, it is more likely that a VPN provider will be malicious or a honeypot, than that an arbitrary generic VPS provider will be.So why do VPN services exist? Surely they must serve some purpose?
Because it's easy money. You just set up OpenVPN on a few servers, and essentially start reselling bandwidth with a markup. You can make every promise in the world, because nobody can verify them. You don't even have to know what you're doing, because again, nobody can verify what you say. It is 100% snake-oil.So yes, VPN services do serve a purpose - it's just one that benefits the provider, not you.
[...]
source: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/5a9909939e6ce7d09e29#dont-use-vpn-servicesTest your browser to see how well you are protected from tracking and fingerprinting:
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
Norton 360 v22.24.5.6?
aliendancer:
With the VPN on, when I try to use Thunderbird with the VPN on to download my mail it says my IP address is not valid.
I also have issues with some other sites like SSN
SSN?
peterweb:
The issue is your email provider blocking access from an IP address from a location they do not recognise for your account. This is done to protect your account. You can add your Thunderbird to the Split Tunnel feature of Norton's VPN to avoid this happening. Click on the down arrow beside the Turn on/off for the VPN feature, then click on Settings. Click on Split Tunnel and then on Add. Navigate to and add the Thunderbird.exe file and you should not be blocked any more.
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/8525257 02-Dec-2023
peterweb:
Many web sites do not allow access from known VPN IP addresses. They do this for copyright, legal, security, and political reasons. There is nothing a VPN provider can or should do to circumvent these legal protections. See this How to Geeks article. https://www.howtogeek.com/403771/why-do-some-websites-block-vpns/So the changes you are seeing are not related to the VPN service. The sites you used to be able to view seem to have changed their access to users with VPN active. Check with the sites support to see if this is what has happened.
https://community.norton.com/en/comment/8557064 01-Jun-2024