VPNs w/kill switches

I’ve decided to move on from ipvanish. Reasons: too many dropped connections and no kill switch for fire devices. I contacted ipvanish months ago about supporting a kill switch for fire devices, was told no current plans to do this, not a priority. It’s a high priority for me. Several highly recommended vpns support kill switches but don’t support fire devices. Thus far, I’ve identified pia, cyberghost, and vyprvpn as possible replacements with kill switches for fire devices. There may be others I’m not aware of. Any feedback or suggestions will be appreciated.

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Check out ExpressVPN and see if that works for you. On recommendation of several web reviews, I subscribed 2 years ago and have not been disappointed.

Another dissatisfied customer of IP Vanish! More and more people are realizing IP Vanish is not even close to being the best VPN service available.

@sim_bill, it’s my understanding that the expressvpn kill switch isn’t supported on fire devices. Is this correct?

Hello @r_higginbotham that is what I’ve been told as well regarding Express. According to IPVanish it is very difficult to implement kill switch in Android and the ones who say they do it probably doesn’t work. The problem with this is that I’m not sure how to test this with providers that do say that they provide kill switch. I use VPNSafetyDot but I’m with you, I wish there was a dependable kill switch and I’ve been providing that input to IPVanish as well for the past couple years. If anyone can provide a service recommendation that has a working one, I will be happy to look into it and figure out a way to test it out.

Thanks Troy. I did a trial with vyprvpn a couple of years ago and their kill switch worked ok as far as I could tell. If ipvanish did support a kill switch for fire devices, I wouldn’t be looking elsewhere. I’ve never had speed issues. I have a ridiculous number of fire devices being used simultaneously so the support for unlimited devices also works for me. The dropped connections issue seems to pop up every few months, lingers for several days, then clears up. Several times I’ve been forced to uninstall/reinstall ipvanish to get back online. I could live with occasional dropped connections if ipvanish supported a kill switch. I’ve already received one dmca letter from my internet provider. I don’t want to receive another. I’ve been using vpnsafetydot and it’s a decent workaround, but I’ve had ipvanish disconnect several times while watching something and if you’re not vigilant and don’t notice the red dot, then you keep on streaming with your ip address exposed. A functional kill switch would solve this problem. When I contacted ipvanish about this, I was told it wasn’t a high priority for them. It is for me.

Since I and family/friends use stock android devices only, sorry I can’t answer the question. I see others may have an answer on this issue.

@r_higginbotham I am going to contact them again about this. I agree, this should be something that they definitely get added to their Android apps (Fire TV devices included). I don’t like depending on SafetyDot either and yes, the DMCA notice could mean bad things depending on the service you are using or the watchdog group that sees your downloads. Thanks for this information about Vypr.

I found your comments interesting since I don’t seem to have issues with dropped connections.

I found this article might be helpful.

Good luck

Great article, thanks. I was concerned at one point that network issues might be contributing to dropped connections. I upgraded routers which virtually eliminated drops across the household. I’m constantly checking speeds and switching servers. My primary streaming device is 10 feet from my router which gives my max signal strength. I’ve switched back and forth between udp and tcp. I do have extended periods where no drops occur. It’s those scenarios where I can’t just go into ipvanish and reconnect that puzzle and concern me. Sometimes I can’t open ipvanish or I get a login screen and my credentials aren’t recognized so I have to uninstall/reinstall. I’ve reached a point where I want the security of a kill switch regardless of why connection drops happen, with ipvanish or any other vpn. Thanks again for the link, lots of relevant information.

I experience the same problem when I had IPVanish. I switched to Nord VPN over two years ago. It’s MUCH faster and works without any problems.

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Another problem with IPVanish is they don’t do split tunneling on PC’s. I had a real train wreck with PayPal when I was trying to do some Bitcoin transactions while my VPN was on. PayPal banned me for 180 days because I refused to give them my name, my address, a copy of my passport, and a ton of other private information I refused to provide. I couldn’t do any Bitcoin transactions and watched as it fell in value by a third. I have been with PayPal since before some of you were probably born and they pulled this crap on me.