Activate Protonvpn’s new privacy features

Protonvpn’s free plan (www.snipca. com/45744) gives you unlimited bandwidth each month, though it only has servers in three countries: the US, Japan and the Netherlands. The Swiss company’s VPN Plus plan (www.snipca. com/45749) costs €10 (£8.80) a month, or €6 (£5.30) a month if you pay annually, but over the last year it’s added several new features that make a subscription better value for money.

In April, Protonvpn introduced extensions for Chromium (www.snipca. com/45748) and Firefox (www.snipca. com/45747) browsers, which make it much easier to select VPN servers and switch on encryption as you browse the web. Not only does this conceal your IP address, stop sites tracking you and hide your activities from your ISP, but it also lets you access geo-blocked content you encounter.

Last October, Protonvpn added a new Stealth mode to its mobile apps, which makes encrypted traffic look like ‘normal’ traffic, so nobody (including your ISP) can tell you’re using a VPN. This feature is also available in the Free plan – open Settings, select Protocol and choose Stealth (see screenshot above). The option will be added to the Windows program soon.

Additionally, Protonvpn has improved its Netshield feature, which blocks ads, malware and trackers. You can now see how many privacy threats have been detected and blocked, and where they come from. To activate this option, click the Netshield icon in the side panel and select ‘Block malware, ads & trackers’.

Protonvpn Plus can be used on up to 10 devices at once, and has over 1,900 VPN servers in more than 65 countries. For complete anonymity, choose a server with an onion icon to route your encrypted data through the Tor network, albeit at the expense of speed.