When you connect to public Wi-Fi networks, your personal data can fall prey to hackers. While you browse various sites, cybercriminals can try to capture the traffic that passes through the network. They can also try to capture login credentials in order to fraudulently use your identity and access important sites (such as online banking, medical or work-related pages). From here on out, we’ll collectively refer to these sites as “sensitive sites”.

A virtual private network (VPN) can help protect against these threats. A VPN works by encrypting your network traffic so that it’s unreadable to attackers. It also helps protect login information that attackers might try to steal to log in using your credentials.

VPN Secure Connection is a VPN that’s built directly into Avast One. VPN Secure Connection eliminates the need for a separate VPN product and provides VPN protections along with the other protections and capabilities Avast One offers you. In the free version of Avast One, you have a limited allowance of 5 GB of data traffic per week and only one location to choose from. In the premium version of Avast One, you have unlimited data traffic and have multiple locations to choose from.

When breaking down the benefits of a VPN, we can first examine the security of the various Wi-Fi networks that we use in our day-to-day lives. Think about the privacy of your home Wi-Fi versus that of public networks (in cafes, shopping malls, restaurants, and so on). When you’d like to carry out a task that requires security and privacy, such as handling your online banking, a VPN lets you enjoy military-grade connection from anywhere. So you can do whatever you want, whenever you need. With Avast One, any network can be as secure as your home network.

VPN Secure Connection is designed to be easy to use. It offers the ability to have the VPN on automatically at all times, or to have the VPN Secure Connection remind you to turn on the VPN.  

Why have a feature that offers to remind you to turn on the VPN rather than just having it switched on all the time? The benefit of having the VPN on at all times is clear: it’s always providing you protection while you’re online. However, it's worth noting that VPNs can influence the results displayed on certain tools, such as weather and map apps, due to the fact that they hide your actual location. It’s also fairly well known that major sites, like video streaming sites, won’t let you connect to their services over VPNs. Because of this, you may not want to have a VPN on all the time. With that in mind, VPN Secure Connection is designed to help you remember to turn on your VPN when you’re doing critical tasks online like banking, shopping, signing into websites, or accessing sensitive content.

In short, VPN Secure Connection’s functionality enables you to make the most of the protection benefits that a VPN can offer without experiencing some of the downsides. It also takes away the burden of having to remember to stop and start the VPN on your own by reminding you to turn it on when you’re 

How it works

VPN Secure Connection is a feature in Avast One, available for Microsoft Windows.

Further reading: Avast introduces Avast One

To enable it, open Avast One.

On the left navigation bar, select Explore. Then select VPN Secure Connection. If the VPN is already on you will see a green indicator as shown below.

If the VPN is not on, you’ll see a red indicator as shown below.

If the VPN is off, you can quickly and easily turn it on with default settings by clicking the red indicator. Once it’s enabled, it will show green as shown above.

If you want to configure the settings for VPN Secure connection, first select Open VPN, and you’ll see the VPN Secure Connection console, as shown below.

Here, you can configure which VPN you’ll connect to as well as whether it turns on automatically, reminds you to turn it on, or is disabled entirely.

Configuring the VPN that you connect to 

By default, VPN Secure Connection will suggest connecting to what it believes is the best VPN for you. You can change this by clicking the drop down under When VPN Is On, Your Location Will Appear to Other As.

When you click this, you’re presented with a drop down list, as shown below.

The recommended Fastest location will be enabled by default, though you can pick any other country listed. Those that have more than one possible VPN connection will show the number of possible connections to the right of the country name.

When you select a country with multiple connection options, you’ll see an expanded listing for that country.

Connections that are best for streaming video will have a “play button” icon to the right (like for “Gotham City” above). Connections that are best for peer-to-peer sharing have a “P2P” icon to the right (like for “Miami” above).

Configuring when and how the VPN turns on 

If you want to configure when and how the VPN turns on, you’ll do this on the screen that opens after you click Open VPN, and see the VPN Secure Connection console.

Here, you can choose when and how you want the VPN to turn on.

For the VPN to turn on automatically every time you connect to an untrusted network, select Always Turn on VPN. This is the easiest way to ensure you are best protected at all times with a VPN connection.

If you opt not to turn the VPN on, you can also choose to be reminded to turn it on manually. To do this, select Remind me to turn on VPN. This gives you more control over when the VPN is on, but can leave you unprotected if you ignore the prompt to connect. You can fine tune the reminder settings with the options under Remind me to turn on the VPN when I.... A check next to each activity means that the VPN will prompt you to turn on the VPN if it’s not already turned on when you connect to sites that we associate with this activity. A cleared check means that you won’t be prompted.

Finally, if you want to disable the VPN and its reminders entirely, select Do nothing. If you choose this option, the VPN will only engage when you open Avast One, navigate to the VPN Secure Connection section as directed above, and turn on the VPN by turning the indicator green.

You can always check the status of your VPN in Avast one by going into Avast One, clicking Explore and then selecting VPN Secure Connection.

If the VPN is active, you’ll see a green indicator with information about the IP addresses being used.

VPN Secure Connection in Avast One is meant to provide an easy, simple to configure VPN solution that balances security and ease of use. Unlike other VPNs, it has fewer configuration options, enabling it to be simpler for non-experts to use. VPN Secure Connection offers solid, simple VPN connection options with the basic, most important configuration options that most users will need.

“Meet the Features” is an ongoing series to help introduce you to specific features in Avast products. It’s meant to help you understand and use a specific feature by explaining the security/privacy problem the feature is meant to solve and how it works so that you can quickly understand and use the feature to better protect yourself.

Have a feature you want to meet? Let us know.