Can't Enable Both VPN And Web Protection While Surfing On An Open Connection. Any Reason For That?

If I go to somewhere with an open connection, the system will switch to VPN to encrypt the traffic. If I do this, the traffic is encrypted, but I have no web protection. If I enable web protection, then the connection will not be encrypted.

I agree these are two different systems, but sometimes both are needed for complete protection.

Is there some reason one VPN can not switch modes or something to do both/either as needed?

I don’t like seeing warnings either way. No web protection with VPN, or unsecure connection with the web protection enabled.

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Gjoksi

Hello.

Check out this article:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/answer/34181/

Regards.

iGaryG

Your answer confirmed what I already said, that both Web Protection and VPN can not be used at the same time.

My actual question was what should I do if I am somewhere with an open connection, and want to surf with my browser for something? Web Protection would protect my browsing, but leave my connection unprotected. VPN would protect my connection, but would leave my browser unprotected. Either way Bitdefender would be warning me I am not safe.

iGaryG

How do I mark this question as not answered? Someone marked it as answered, but what the person said did not answer my question.

Gjoksi

Hello again.

No person (admin or moderator) marked your question as Answered. It is the system that did that.

Look, when you start a topic as a question for the issue (like in your case) and someone gives you an answer to your topic (question), there are two options:

which means that someone answered your question,

and

which means that you (as the OP of the topic) have chosen someone's answer as BEST ANSWER to your question, which is similar to SOLVED in other forums.

So, ONLY YOU can mark an answer as best answer to your question.

Kind regards.

iGaryG

After I read your answer, I chose ‘No’ to the question ‘Did this answer your question’.

l stated originally that I understood that we can only use VPN or Web protection, not both.

The actual question was what do we do if we want to use our browser when there is only an insecure connection accessible. Using the Web protection leaves our connection insecure, and using VPN leaves the web browser unprotected.

Alexandru_BD

Hello @iGaryG,

VPN and Web Protection serve different purposes, and you should turn them on depending on your needs. For example, if you want to do some online transactions on your banking site while being connected to an airport or a mall WIFI, you should turn on the VPN, by encrypting & anonymising all your traffic. If you are especially browsing on all kind of new sites that could look suspicious, then Web Protection would be of greater help, making sure that the domains you are accessing are not exposed to online threats (like malware, phishing, miner) by blocking access to dangerous pages.

By design, the two features cannot be used together, because web protection is using a special VPN to protect you while browsing and you can only have 1 VPN enabled at a time. There have been numerous discussions in the forum on this topic:

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/316604#Comment_316604

I hope the information is helpful.

Regards

Donald628

This could be a reason to look for some other web protection. On other platforms, you can have both. I can’t have both ExpressVPN on my iPad and web protection at the same time. However, is this a problem with iOS not BitDefender? In settings, there is only a tab for VPN. There is no separate tab for internet security.

Alexandru_BD

I think this is an iOS restriction, since they both require VPN permissions, they cannot be used at the same time.