Yes, I have seen the other posts about Surfshark’s Killswitch and VPN Safety Dot that poses the thought everything is working as expected, but no, I do not accept that answer.
I have VPN Safety Dot for one reason and one reason only, to turn red if my VPN disconnects. With Surfshark’s Killswitch enabled, when the VPN disconnects VPN Safety Dot can’t turn red and that is a problem.
Specifically, it forces me to assume the VPN, while not connected, is working. Maybe Surfshark’s Kill Switch works perfectly, but maybe it doesn’t and there’s no way for me to be sure using my 3rd Party check.
I really think Surfshark needs to fix this, thoughts?
True that the safety dot may not turn red in that scenario but the fact that all streaming or even getting to your home screen is a pretty good indicator that the kill switch works. I have literally had to get to my SS and turn off the kill switch to get things going again.
Sure, but what about the scenario where I’m streaming something and a Surfshark’s Killswitch daemon/application/process crashes or library unloads or something unusual and the streaming continues even though the VPN is down and the Safety Dot is green?
I get that it seems super unlikely, but without the red/green indicator being accurate, I guard it has no point… right?
I guess in a perfect world the Killswitch is best for when the remote VPN server crashes but my local install is fine. I’m more worried about when Surfshark crashes or messes up and I might have no way of knowing.
It seems like I have two options:
Turn off the Killswitch and trust VPN Safety Dot
Uninstall VPN Safety Dot and trust the Killswich
Maybe Surfshark is more rock solid that IPVanish… okay that’s pretty likely lol… but coming over from IPVanish I know the Safety Dot has saved my butt more than a couple times. IPVanish would just turn off or lose connection at times.
I just wish I could have two layers of verification, first the Killswitch and second the Safety Dot, but at present it seems I have to trust one or the other
I thought Safety Dot worked by comparing IP Address externally to the local IP Address, which would always be 100% verification, but maybe it works by just checking the VPN “telling it” that it’s working??
@jobiegermano first off, thank you for being a Patron, I forgot to mention that in my last reply! You make a good point in that if the Surfshark app would crash, the kill switch wouldn’t matter. I haven’t seen any problems like this in the past 6 months on any of my devices. I personally trust Surfshark more than VPN Safety Dot. Plus, I don’t like that dot in the corner. LOL.
My connection had been stopped by SS kill switch in the past but the dot stayed green. I’ve connected before and the dot never went to green. I trust the kill switch over the flashing dot
I gave up on the dot long ago. While I agree its handy but I often found it flashing green with the vpn off. That was on wifi and since that time ive migrated everything to wired. Never trust the dot.
That’s because you have killswitch turned on which breaks the dot’s functionality. That’s what this thread is about. If you turn of the killswitch feature the dot works. You can test by turning off killswitch and then just connect/disconnect the vpn and watch the dot switch from green to red and vice versa correctly. I’ve been using v1.9.2 of the dot without issue for a long time. That’s with IPVanish which doesn’t have a killswitch. It’s saved my butt many times when IPVanish‘a VPN just drops randomly.
Are you sure you had dot failures when you were NOT using the killswitch? I’ve never once had the dot be wrong so long as the killswitch feature wasn’t turned on.
The only thing I’ve seen break the dot is having killswitch turned on. It’s not compatible with the killswitch feature and that’s what this thread is about. I feel that’s due to a bug in Surfshark’s programming, but I don’t know if they consider it a bug or feature lol
VPN Dot is actually up to V1.99 now as I mentioned a week ago or so. SS I have found to much very stable as I changed over from IPV. IPV would lose connection often and I see continuous connection easily 300-400 hours on SS. IPV, not a chance.
I would trust the kill switch as it’s too easy to not notice the dot when immersed in something and sometimes it stutters as well and you have to look to see if everything is ok. I still like the visual cue but again, SS will shut things down, the reason for the kill switch and the #1 reason I changed over although I have found so many other benefits now. There is a reason it’s rated #1 here now.
I will continue using the dot with SS and kill switch will always be on. The chances of both failing the same time are not likely.
to my knowledge, correct me if i’m wrong the safety dot is not supported by any vpn. With that in mind your security is only as good as you make it. Relying on an un-supported app like the dot is at your own peril. Nice to have if it works but imho it cant be trusted.
Thank you for that detailed response Wizard. You bring up good points. The is a chance I don’t see the dot turn red. In fact, it’s kinda amazing how the human mind can ignore that. I have dot on 0% opacity, i.e., no transparency, full color and i almost never notice it at all when watching TV. I probably should have checked the GitHub for the latest version before posting, but I’m fairly certain the latest version won’t fix this. I do think ultimately this is Surfshark’s issue. But I’m making some assumptions there. Still, when i have the killswitch setting turned on and I manually click “disconnect” from within SS, the dot stays green unless I force close SS. It has to be in their killswitch implementation. Whether I manually click disconnect or if the killswitch does it for me, i would think dot would notice the disconnection. My guess is that in order for them to get a working killswitch (remember IPV hasn’t figured out how to implement still) they must be tricking the OS into thinking there is still a connection because the OS doesn’t react like it would if I literally pulled the LAN connection. On both my Shield Pro and Fire Stick Max I’m seeing the same thing. Then again, I’m also only routing 6 apps through the vpn tunnel so I guess my config could play a part. I wonder if the killswitch just stops an individual app, all 6 of my routed apps, or the entire device? It can’t be the entire device because on the firestick it would lose its home screen and go to the networking pane in settings. I’ve got too many variables and not enough institutional knowledge lol
Do you know how the dot determines if your vpn is active? It could be looking for specific services running, it could be looking for specific traffic/encapsulation, or it could be sending packets externally and looking for changes in actual IP Addresses.
I don’t think any VPN manufacturers officially support the dot, but that’s kinda the point of using a third party verification. If Surfshark provided its own dot, i wouldn’t trust it to check itself… literally that’s what the killswitch already does, just instead of a dot it runs an action. What I want is double verification really. I want SS’s killswitch to be enabled protecting me if the vpn disconnects, and additionally I want an unrelated, 3rd party app to be watching SS keeping it honest.
Both SS and dot are just apps coded by people. There’s nothing that I know of that makes one a app more trustworthy than the other… except for time and reputation. To that effect, I’ve used dot for years and it’s never failed me before, but I’ve only used SS for a couple days now. Obviously i think SS is trustworthy, but i think dot is too.
I use the thumb up/down. I tend to ignore colours. I’ve had the safety dot since it first came out and it’s always worked perfectly for me. As for staying green when SS has blocked the internet that’s exactly as it should be because it’s saying your VPN is “active” and it is. Force close SS and it’ll turn red.
VPN active= green or thumb up
VPN inactive = red or thumb down
I like to think about it this same way @Miki . I feel like SS and Safety Dot (as long as it is still being supported) can work in conjunction with each other. With SS (with kill switch on) you just need to understand what the colors mean now. Green doesnt mean protected or not anymore, it just means that SS is running in the background or not. If red, an error has occurred and crashed SS. If green, at least you know it is running. If apps dont load, the kill switch has successfully kept you from accessing the app and that in itself notifies you to go into SS app and connect VPN to a location.
That’s a good way of looking at it. The dot remains green because SS is active and doing it’s job. Now if the kill switch has activated then you are still protected, as the green dot indicates, because your VPN is working and blocking your connection to the internet, so you’re safe. Now reconnect to the internet in SS and you’re back on line and still protected.
Sorry, but i find that completely illogical. There’s no point in having an indicator to show if my VPN’s process is loaded into memory. I know it’s loaded into memory because I launched it. Simply running it and “trusting” that it works can be done without a dot on my screen. The entire point of the dot is to tell my traffic is encapsulated by the VPN tunnel, not simply that “some portion of my VPN’s code” is running. As a cyber professional, we’re prone to “trust but verify” which is what the dot does for me. Well, supposed to.
For all I know SS’s Killswitch will get a code update next week and with a bug that doesn’t kill the traffic yet still keeps the dot green and I’ll have no idea. Asking me to trust that they’ve coded their Killswitch correctly when I’m looking at it incorrectly interact with other programs is a bit silly.
Yes, SS is likely coded well and if they make a mistake in a future release, it’s likely that they’ they’ll catch it before release or post a hotfix very quickly, but any way you slice it there a non-zero percent chance that one day my vpn will disconnect and the killswitch won’t engage and my ability to verify with a third party solution won’t work because they’re somehow manipulating the system to keep the dot green when they shouldn’t be. I honestly do understand how you look at it and I see the logic used to get there, i just don’t agree it’s the implementation I want.
At the end of the day, I know my system is acting the same as everyone else’s, so that answers my first question.
Now I’ll just submit a bug fix request and see if it gets fixed
I don’t think they’ll do anything as it’s working exactly as it should, both the Safety Dot and the SS kill switch. The safety dot turns red if SS has somehow shut off and the kill switch has not been enabled, indicating that you now have an open and insecure connection, requiring your attention. Now with the killswitch enabled and SS stops, then immediately traffic from your device is blocked, keeping you safe, and the dot remains green as you are safe. You will know that the killswitch is active as, if I remember correctly, ss will initiate a “red” warning box informing you that the killswitch is active and your connection blocked and of course giving you options. This seems simple and straight forward to me, but understand you would like it to be different and I wish you luck in your effort.
Have Fun and STREAM ON.
