As of March 12, 2024, popular VPN provider IPVanish launched its anti-malware and tracking tool, Threat Protection, alongside split tunneling features on its virtual private network (VPN) app across a wide range of devices, including Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Fire TV.
The days are long gone since one of the best VPN services could get by only encrypting internet connections and spoofing IP addresses. With online threats becoming increasingly complex, VPNs must catch up and offer a multifaceted level of protection. How else can they expect to shield you from cybercriminals and oppressive censorship?
Why you should use Threat Protection
"For over a decade, we have been providing essential tools to protect consumer privacy online," said Subbu Sthanu, Chief Commercial Officer at IPVanish. Now, he said, the team also wants to secure users' online actions against malicious actors.
"Threat Protection is our response to the increased threats facing our users and the need to shield them from malicious sites and tracking," explained Sthanu.
This new layer of defense uses advanced filtering techniques to monitor web traffic against potential threats. It also utilizes blocking lists to proactively filter out unsecured sites. These, said the provider, are updated in real time to guarantee maximum protection.
"Our Threat Protection feature utilizes our proprietary threat intelligence cloud service, which uses machine learning along with AI technology to categorize and classify links," an IPVanish team spokesperson told me. "This service processes millions of links daily, providing real-time updates on the latest threats identified by our enterprise VIPRE security products."
Shield up! 🛡️ Our Threat Protection feature stops ads, trackers, and malicious sites in their tracks.Available on all platforms.https://t.co/bkC87RiX3GMarch 12, 2024
So, what are the benefits for you here?
Your browsing experience will become both more secure and faster as Threat Protection keeps filtering out third-party content before loading to preserve data usage while blocking third-party cookies and tracking scripts as well. At the same time, it prevents you from accessing known malicious websites, including phishing schemes and malware-embedded sites, to further protect users and their data.
This new functionality now places IPVanish alongside the most secure VPNs already offering similar advanced protections, including our top picks NordVPN and ExpressVPN.
Why you should use split tunneling
The good news for IPVanish users doesn't end here, though.
After a successful beta period, the provider also launched a feature that Apple users have long been waiting for: split tunneling integrated into its Mac VPN app.
Split tunneling gives you more control over your VPN experience as it lets you choose the traffic to route and the one to exclude from your VPN network. It comes quite handy as it allows you to access content—like your banking service, for instance—which would normally require you a fixed IP address without the need to turn off your VPN software.
While IPVanish was already offering the feature across its Windows, Android, iOS, and Fire TV applications, it's now one of the few providers to have added this also on Mac. Private Internet Access (PIA) was the first to bring back split tunneling on MacOS a few weeks ago after Apple suddenly removed it in 2021. Yet, the IPVanish team said that the work undertaken by PIA did not influence their operations. "Consequently, we did not leverage or build upon it," a spokesperson told me.
You can now activate both the Threat Protection and split tunneling features within the IPVanish VPN app on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, and Fire TV devices.
