Hi I know there where posts on the privacy dot in the past mainly saying it stays green all the time and a few contrary however after experimenting I found out that if your vpn kill switch is enabled it was that which caused it to stay green so for those who have given up. Try again but disable your kill switch. I guess it’s a choice of either or.
I’ve had the privacy dot since the dev was here and released it. Set it up that long ago and it’s not failed me once. Not even a hiccup.
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I use the Monitor Dot and have had no issues. Both can be found it the TP Toolbox.
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True, thats a correct state. If the kill switch does its job the light will remain green indicating “safe” … however rendering the connection dead. 
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I use both of the free dots that were published here.
I have IPVanish, so no kill switch. I use the free version of VPNSafetyDot. It occassionly disconnects, but my vpn will still be connected. However, my IPVanish VPN status incidator is on as well. So, if vpn disconnects a grey light comes on.
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I understand this is the correct state, but in the last two weeks if I log on to my device and forgot to exit from TiviMate, it’ll immediately start playing the channel I had going on TiviMate. So I exit out of TiviMate to home screen, have the green indicator dot, go into Surfshark, and find out it is NOT connected with the banner that says “kill switch disconnected your internet”. Yet internet was still working as I was watching TiviMate just 20 seconds before. So the SS killswitch is NOT disconnecting my internet. I’m now in the habit of checking SS first thing to make sure it’s connected (good practice anyway I suppose), but kind of scary that internet is not being killed.
Edit: could it be that the video playing of TiviMate was cached and there really wasn’t an internet signal? I don’t really want to test this theory because I’d be doing it without a VPN connected.
If this happens again, simply run a speed test on your device to find out if the internet is actually connected or not.
Good idea. I was thinking I could go into settings > internet and find out that way too – can’t remember if this is stated or not (ethernet cable).
You need to change a setting in TiViMate settings>General> turn off “Turn on last channel on app start”.
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I had turned that on for convenience, but I don’t really see how it effects the main tenant of SS not killing the internet. I have an outlet timer that turns off router/modem combo at 3am for half an hour every night. I wonder if this is messing with SS and/or TiviMate. Doubt it, but who knows.
Nothing to do with SS. It simply stops your Tivimate from auto connecting when your VPN is not active. You indicated that logging onto your device Tivimate starts the last channel you were watching. Now it won’t and you can control when Tivimate connects after assuring yourself that the VPN is in fact on. Just a precaution.
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I noticed that if I do a reboot on my Shield the VPN disconnects and does not reconnect. I have to go into my Express and connect it manually and I do have it set to auto-connect on startup. However, I do not have the “Block Internet when unable to connect to vpn”.
TBH that is a main reason I switched to a router based vpn. I was always in doubt that the Dot/vpn could be trusted. On my router I have 5 surfshark connections (ovpn) and 3 mulvad(wireguard) and 2 Proton wireguard connections…All always on.
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That seems ideal, but I do like running some devices without a VPN sometimes. I get 400 mbps down without VPN and 30-90 with SS engaged.
So the reboot stops SS, but that doesn’t explain why internet is still running and the killswitch didn’t interrupt the internet. Wait, maybe if the rounter is suddenly shut down, it disconnects SS and the killswitch doesn’t have time to shut off the internet. So the internet simply restarts without a VPN. Huuum…
The issue I mentioned only happens when I reboot. When I shutdown my device in a normal fashion. Then when I re-start my VPN and Dot are all working as they should be.
I am figuring when I do a normal shutdown, I believe the device just goes into a sleep mode. I do have the dot and vpn whitelisted, so they are always running in the background.
When I do a reboot. Then I believe the device is actually being turned completely off. However, I would think that once my device is restarted. The vpn should auto-start on startup.
I believe the VPN did auto-start on startup…up until two weeks ago. Now it does not. I didn’t change settings or do anything else differently. So right now the internet auto-starts but the VPN does not. I may have to get rid of the socket timer and do any reboots of the modem manually. And, like Miki said, turn off the TiviMate setting that automatically goes to last channel viewed.
Still don’t know why this suddenly happened, but I don’t know the reason for existence either lol…okay I do know that…it’s 42.
You can still do the mechanical timer. You just have to remember to start your vpn when you turn on your device.
Btw, my Monitor Dot does restart on startup after a reboot and will flash red indicating my vpn is not on.
I used Button Mapper to remap my Netflix button to access my vpn. So, after a reboot. My vpn is one click away.
That is interesting too. My monitor dot will be green with the VPN off in this scenario.
As far as the outlet timer, yes, I can do a manual VPN start when opening the device and I’m pretty adept at checking that first, but not always. It is disconcerting that TiviMate was playing without a VPN – but that was “my bad” because I didn’t go back, back, back, back the night before to exit the application.
So I’m weighing the “dangers” of using the timer vs the convenience. I’ll check for a SS update too.
If you have the kill switch enabled, then the VPN is reporting to Android that it is protecting the device by blocking internet connectivity when the VPN connection is not active.
Monitor Dot operates by asking Android if a VPN is running on the device and will display green dot if Android returns “yes”, otherwise it will display a red dot.
If you turn off the Kill switch in your VPN, then Monitor Dot will properly display a RED dot because the VPN app will have reported to Android that it is no longer protecting the device.