Lots of talk here lately of folks getting those new-fangled Fire TV’s. Congrats, I did also, and here’s an interesting config issue I stumbled on: (im the worlds worse about buyin stuff and not opening it till much later. (NOT LAZY, but honey-do’s keep me from Fishing too, so that’s how bad it is lately!) Prime Day is a distant memory it seems like, but After finally firing up and sorting the new TV to my liking, including adding Tivimate, replete with my trusty IPTV service, Kodi and the (imho defacto standard & rock solid) Crew add-on, I then tweaked good ole IPVanish to the fastest server and even bestowed the Safety Dot upon it as my wants would have. Things were smooth sailing and rocking steady with my 600 meg just a flying in the tunnel of security provided by the VPN. I know, I know, the Safety Dot is not my main trusted source that all is ok, but its still a comfort to glimpse at it’s slow flash, and it’s not too pesky. I figured that since I still have a perfectly good Cube and it has more horsepower than this fancy new tv could muster, id integrate the mini borg-box into “the collective”. I even named it “Locutus”. It was already setup and ready. One HDMI cable insertion and a reboot later, im online again.
Since I have not read about this yet, just something I found to pass along. Hope it helps someone. The Safety Dot app when running permeates and displays on top of any gui going at the time. INCLUDING any other instance if you are running another stick, box or whatever. So what I had going was the VPN was OFF on the TV so the dot was RED, but I had the Cube interface running with the VPN ON and the dot was GREEN. BLINK RED BLINK GREEN (ad infinitum) till I figured it out. Sorry for the long winded story, Summation:
If you have a FIRETV and are using a Stick or Box or Cube or whatever with it, Disable the DOT on the TV interface. Geez that’s a lot of words just to say that i guess, but reading is free, and writing it kept me out of trouble for a little while anyway. Safe Streams!
I quit using the dot back in my firestick days when I caught it flashing green and the vpn was off 
… bye bye 
I’ve heard of the occasional hiccup with Safety Dot but have never had even one hiccup on any stick I’ve ever programmed. Always worked perfectly.
So @TXRon , do you use anything similar to Safety Dot, if there is anything?
I just use ip widgets on the home screen and vpn thru router with kill switch.
Thanks for the reply, will have to read up on ip widgets…
I use this widget, will need all permissions granted. Its also in the playstore for most boxes.
IP Widget APK for Android Download
Yea Miki, same here, its always worked super for me too. In this case it actually did what its supposed to but i forgot it was running in the background from the TV interface while I was actually using the Cube interface.
Convert it to the troypoint logo, fixes everything! 
Great idea. I havent fooled with changing logos yet, but will scope it out, thanks!!
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The only problem is, it only takes a second of no VPN protection for your provider to violate your privacy and log your activity. The only solution I see at this point, is a kill switch installed on your router somehow.
Now a days the top VPNs that Troy recommends already have the Kill Switch option that you are able to turn on with your VPN, That is one of the main focus of Troy’s ranking…having a working Kill Switch. Me personally, I like having the flashing green dot also.
I bought a router, which allows me to install a VPN onto it. Unless your router has a way to use a work around “kill switch” though, which very few routers do unless you do some programming using a PC, the BEST way to protect yourself is to use the VPN app, which has the kill switch, to disconnect your connection if the VPN fails. That way you can use any router and rely on your VPN app to absolutely protect you instantly, when your VPN goes down. That way you won’t need to constantly monitor your connection with a Dot app! The only way this doesn’t apply, is if your device cannot run your VPN app.
“That way you won’t need to constantly monitor your connection with a Dot app!”
That may not be accurate because if the kill switch fails, you will not know that because the VPN probably also failed because the two features are part of the same app, so you’ll just be streaming along without a clue that no VPN is running (and the kill switch failed). This has happened to another user in this forum, so this is not just a hypothetical possibility.
And if you try to “check” if your vpn is running without a dot app, you will probably do that by clicking on your vpn’s icon to see if it says “connected”, but even if you see the word “connected” you won’t know if the VPN wasn’t running before you click the icon because by doing that, you could have actually restarted the VPN if it was setup to auto-reconnect on startup.
By running a dot app, you will know about these things because it’s a separate app.
Why anyone would choose to not run such a non obtrusive when there are so many things that can go wrong with a vpn and it’s kill switch is beyond me. It’s a fail safe standalone app that I would not be without and can potentionally save you a lot of grief if you get caught.
I’ve never known the kill switch to fail within a VPN app, have you? I’ve known the Dot to slowly react to a VPN disconnect and not reflect that on the screen. It only takes a split second to expose your IP address and have it logged by your provider! That’s why I trust the kill switch, rather than using a third party app. The kill switch within the VPN is a lot more dependable and instantaneous.
I’ve been using the Monitor Dot for years as some VPNs do not have a configurable killswitch on some streaming devices. I tested it quite extensively and found it to react immediately to any VPN disconnect and alert me. Yes a killswitch that you can turn on in the VPN app on a streamer is the better way, but if that isn’t an option then an app like this is better than nothing.
“I’ve never known the kill switch to fail within a VPN app, have you?”
This is the user that I was referring to that reported they still had an internet connection when the VPN was disconnected even when they had the kill switch feature enabled: