What is A VPN Kill Switch?

A VPN kill switch is a feature that prevents your device from accessing the internet if the VPN connection is lost. It is important because it helps to protect your online privacy and security by ensuring that your internet traffic is not transmitted over an unsecured connection if the VPN connection is lost.

How Does a vPN Kill Switch Work?

the problem

Let’s say you are using a VPN with NO kill switch. When you connect to a VPN, all of your internet traffic is routed through an encrypted tunnel to a VPN server. This helps to protect your data from being intercepted by third parties such as hackers, your internet service provider (ISP), or even your government.

However, without a kill switch, if the VPN connection is lost (goes down) for any reason, your device will automatically switch back to using your regular internet connection. This means that your internet traffic is no longer encrypted and your activity and location could potentially be intercepted by third parties.

The solution

A VPN kill switch helps to prevent this from happening by automatically blocking your device’s access to the internet if the VPN connection is lost. This ensures that your internet traffic remains encrypted and secure, even if the VPN connection is lost.

But don’t worry, even though Kill Switch sounds like something you have to push, click or activate, it’s not that way at all. The Kill Switch is simply a setting in your VPN’s service that handles the “killing” for you. You don’t have to do anything to engage the kill switch, so if you use a virtual private network with a kill switch feature, you’re all set from the start.

in summary

To summarize, a VPN kill switch is an important security feature that helps to protect your online privacy and security by ensuring that your internet traffic is not transmitted over an unsecured connection if the VPN connection is lost.