Split Tunneling doesn't seem to work for Paramount Plus

Willy_b1

I have several entries in Split Tunneling and each seems to work fine. Paramount Plus worked until a few weeks ago and then it stopped loading. If I turn off the VPN, it will work. Any thoughts on resolving this?

Alexandru_BD

Hello,

I did some research on this and apparently Paramount Plus is known to block VPN/proxy traffic, so if it recently stopped working while the VPN is enabled, this may be due to Paramount changing how it detects VPN connections. Split Tunneling should normally let selected apps or websites bypass the VPN, but Paramount Plus may still be detecting VPN-related traffic through browser cookies, DNS, auxiliary domains, or another browser or app process that is not currently excluded.

There are a couple of things you can try though. First, if you are watching in a browser, then you should add the Paramount Plus website to Split Tunneling, not just the browser executable. The VPN also has a separate option for adding websites to Split Tunneling, intended for streaming services, banking sites, portals, and location-based websites that do not work correctly while VPN is enabled. You can add the exact URL used to access Paramount.

Secondly, clear browser cache and cookies for Paramount Plus. This can help, because Paramount may have stored region/session data from a previous VPN connection. After adding the site to Split Tunneling, you should fully close the browser, clear cookies and cache for Paramount Plus, reopen the browser, sign in again, and test again.

I think it's also worth testing using a different browser, because this helps confirm whether the issue is tied to browser cookies, extensions, cached location data, or the browser process itself.

The next step is not ideal as a permanent setup because it bypasses VPN for all browser traffic, but it is a useful diagnostic step. You can temporarily add the browser .exe to Split Tunneling as well. Bitdefender’s app-based Split Tunneling routes selected apps outside the VPN tunnel, and on Windows it applies to applications selected in the VPN settings. For example:

chrome.exe
msedge.exe
firefox.exe

Another thing you could try (and this usually applies when encountering connectivity issues on various websites and apps) is to switch between servers. IF Paramount sees the VPN IP at any stage, that IP may now be blocked.

Also in the VPN settings, you can try switching from Automatic to another protocol. This could help as well.
One more thing, if you use Bitdefender VPN’s integrated ad blocker or anti-tracker features (or any privacy blockers for that matter), you should temporarily disable them and retry. Streaming services often depend on multiple authentication, DRM, telemetry, and CDN domains and these tools may block them, resulting in the content not being streamed.

Let us know if anything here helped.

For what it's worth, here's an article on the official Paramount Plus website explaining their position regarding the use of proxy and VPN:

https://support.paramountplus.com/s/article/PI-Why-am-I-seeing-a-message-to-disable-my-VPN-proxy-when-I-try-to-stream-a-show?language=en_US

Regards