What is IPVanish's Threat Protection tool and how can it keep me safer online?

The world of VPNs is an increasingly saturated market with providers eager to develop and enhance its product offering in order to stand out to potential customers.

Many of the best VPN providers, then, have developed features that go beyond encrypting data while browsing online and allowing users to unblock streaming services.

IPVanish's Threat Protection is one such instance of this, providing extra security to its users while browsing online.

Read on for Threat Protection from IPVanish is and how it gives you better online protection across your devices.

IPVanish: from only $2.19 per month

IPVanish has long been a reputable VPN provider that's packed with handy security settings and features. Despite the affordability of its plans, you still get the benefit of:

💻 Use on unlimited simultaneous devices
🎴eSIM data usable in 200+ countries
🌍 Ad, tracker, and malware protection

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What is IPVanish's Threat Protection tool?

While all VPNs encrypt your data and conceal your IP address, IPVanish's Threat Protection gives an additional multi-layered security approach that makes browsing online cleaner and safer, blocking and protecting against ads, trackers, and malicious websites.

• Ads can slow down load times, affect user experience, and burn through your mobile data faster.
• Trackers can watch what you do online, collecting your personal data without consent and facilitating targeted ads.
• Malicious websites are often used as a way to infiltrate your device via phishing attempts, ultimately compromising your identity or infecting your devices with malware.

Why is Threat Protection better than a regular ad blocker?

While ad blockers protect on a web browser level, a VPN functions at a DNS level. Put simply, this means Threat Protection protects you against ads, trackers, and malware across not just your web browser, but other apps and games across devices compatible with IPVanish's Threat Protection.

What devices is IPVanish's Threat Protection available on?

Good news, Threat Protection is available across all of IPVanish's clients and apps, including:

• Windows
• Mac
• Android
• iOS
• Amazon Fire TV
• Apple Vision

What IPVanish plans include Threat Protection?

Threat Protection comes with both IPVanish's standard Essential and more premium Advanced packages, regardless of whether you sign up for a monthly subscription, annual, or two year plan. However, if you want to benefit from its more recent Threat Protection Pro feature (more below), you'll need the Advanced Plan.

What is Threat Protection Pro?

Recently launched, in beta and only available for desktop (Windows and Mac) at the time of writing, Threat Protection Pro is IPVanish's even more advanced security tool.

Just like the standard Threat Protection tool, it works against ads, trackers and malicious websites. However, it goes one better by blocking such attacks even when your VPN is switched off. Essentially, then, it offers always-on protection.

"Powered by the enterprise-grade VIPRE antivirus engine, Threat Protection Pro is built to block malicious websites, stop harmful downloads before they execute, and filter out intrusive ads and trackers," says IPVanish.

How to turn on Threat Protection on IPVanish

It's really easy for IPVanish users to toggle on Threat Protection:

1. (If you haven't already) Subscribe to either IPVanish's Essential or Advanced plan
2. Launch the app on your chosen device
3. Go to Settings
4. Scroll to find the Threat Protection feature under 'Advanced Protection'
5. Toggle On

What are other online security tools does IPVanish have?

• Double Hop: What's better than one encrypted tunnel channeling your data through? How about two! Double the protection, IPVanish's Double Hop routes your traffic through two secure servers for even more advanced online anonymity.
• Kill switch: Offered pretty much as a standard across most VPN services, a kill switch does exactly what the name suggests: should the server connection drop, IPVanish will kill your internet connection to avoid your device and activity being compromised.
• Split tunneling: Enjoy the best of both with split tunneling. This allows you to better customize how and when you use a VPN, with the option to send some traffic through your VPN and the rest direct. Particularly useful if you need to access sites at school or work that don't allow for VPN usage.
• DNS leak protection: Don't want your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to know what you're up to online? IPVanish's DNS leak protection ensures your DNS queries don't escape through its encrypted tunnels while connected to its VPN.