Norton Secure VPN Review

Privacy and Security Concerns With Norton

One of the main concerns when using a VPN is trust. We turn to a VPN to protect our data, to ensure that the websites we visit aren’t being tracked and that police and law enforcement won’t get access to our data should they subpoena the company. Let’s take a look at the company’s footprint and data policies to see how safe of a choice they are.

A Jurisdictional Issue

Unfortunately, Norton is a US-based company, which puts them under a jurisdiction notorious for gathering data from its citizens. The United States is a global leader in Five Eyes, Nine Eyes, and 14 Eyes, international cooperatives of countries committed to sharing intelligence. On its face, this is a red flag for us since it indicates that the company may be forced to hand over user data at some point.

To Norton’s credit, however, they do provide a transparent look at how they handle data, which gave us a bit of reassurance. Norton doesn’t log where we visit on the Internet, so even if they were forced to hand over data, there wouldn’t be much for governmental agencies to go on.

The data Norton does collect is relatively benign, and generally standard for the industry, though there were a couple of points that gave us pause. On their website they offer a detailed look at how they handle data, with subsections for each of their products, VPN included. This transparency is a nice way for the company to assuage some of our reservations about their jurisdictional shortcomings. One of the data fields the company collected was our IP address and geolocation, which even though it’s anonymized, made us a little uneasy. They also collected aggregate bandwidth usage, OS version for mobile devices, and certain diagnostic data.

Within their privacy policy, Norton claims that subscriber information could be provided to third parties such as “government-related auditors” and “services providers” which feels open-ended and a little suspect, but the fact that the company doesn’t log user data or have agreements to sell data to third-party advertisers is enough to keep them above board in our eyes.

Server Count and Location

The number of servers and the spread of those servers across countries creates the conditions for a VPN to be successful. When we’re evaluating VPNs, we tend to favor those with the largest footprints, because it typically means that there are multiple servers in our general region which can help increase speeds as we’re surfing the web. For a good example, check out our NordVPN review, which features more than 5,000 servers in more than 60 countries.

Norton Secure VPN has 1,500 servers spread across 31 countries, with 200 server locations in 73 cities. This footprint is modest, but it’s not a noticeably paltry number. Another point to note is that of their 1,500 servers, 1,200 are virtual servers. Virtual servers are essentially a way to use software to mimic the presence of physical servers, and it’s a more cost-effective way for VPNs and other web hosts to increase their server count without having additional, dedicated physical servers.2

Virtual servers can also be configured to give the appearance of a larger footprint. For example, Norton could set up a virtual server in New York City but have it configured to display its location in London. To Norton’s credit, they claim that all of the virtual servers they use are in the countries they display.

Norton Secure VPN’s Encryption and Security

One of the major selling points that Norton highlights about their VPN is “bank-grade encryption”. The VPN features an AES-256 encryption which is what we’ve come to expect from VPNs, and the industry standard. While we’re happy to see Norton come through on encryption, there were some security vulnerabilities that gave us pause, however.

• No Kill Switch: A kill switch is a great way to keep protected should something happen to the VPN connection. While Norton doesn’t claim that the VPN offers a kill switch, we figured we’d put it to the test anyway to see what happened. We brought our Windows laptop to a local library and used their public network. After losing service, our browser continued functioning normally, which meant that our Internet Service Provider could see our web traffic and IP address, defeating the purpose of the VPN in the first place.
• Multi-hop: On the plus side, Norton Secure now offers limited multi-hop technology. With multi-hop, your connection is routed through not one but multiple servers. If using a VPN makes it hard to track you, using multi-hop makes it even harder. Access, however, depends on which routers you’re trying to use and how far away you are from them.
• Dynamic IP Addresses: Another point in Norton Secure’s favor is its use of dynamic IP addresses. Unlike static addresses, dynamic addresses change every time you log on, making it harder for anyone to track your online behaviors.

• DNS and WebRTC Leaks: We could get in the weeds explaining what DNS and WebRTC leaks mean, but the long and the short of it is we ran tests to determine if our information was exposed while running the VPN. Thankfully, after running our tests we determined that our IP address wasn’t exposed in either instance, and our location was successfully shielded. Check out the screenshots below from our tests:

Testing the VPN’s Speed

Because VPNs run your Internet activity through additional servers, there can be significant degradation in the speed of your browsing, downloading and streaming. We put the Norton Secure VPN through the ringer to see how much it would affect our speeds. Here’s what we discovered. First, let’s take a look at our tests on a Windows PC.

As you can see, our speed on Windows was much slower, especially with regards to ping rate (more than 11 times slower) and upload speeds (more than 60 percent slower). Download speeds were surprisingly good, coming in only 27 percent slower than without the VPN running.

Now let’s see how the tests went on Mac:

The ping rate on our Mac was about three times slower, and the download rate was around 30 percent slower as well; but impressively, upload speeds barely lost anything at all, coming in only four percent slower.

Generally speaking, Norton Secure VPN’s speeds are roughly in line with the normal degradation of service we’ve come to expect from VPNs. We weren’t blown away by blazing speeds with the VPN connected, but it also didn’t bring our computers to a total crawl while it was operational.

Some Odds and Ends

As we mentioned earlier, Norton Secure VPN is a relatively no-frills service. Meaning, there are few advanced settings or additional features that blew us away as we were using the VPN. Broadly speaking, however, there are some features that we’ve come to expect from VPNs that we were missing with Norton that we’d like to take a second to discuss.

• Split tunneling: Recently, Norton Secure began offering split tunneling, though for now you can only access this feature through its Windows and Android apps. Split tunneling allows you to log on to a VPN at the same time you’re logged on to a local network. When you’re out for coffee, you can stream Spotify over the shop’s Wi-Fi but still encrypt any online business that needs to stay private.
• Streaming Services: One of the best gifts a VPN can offer is access to streaming libraries of international versions of services like Netflix. While Netflix has made it clear3 that they don’t plan to cater to VPN users, certain VPNs are able to bypass regional blocks to unlock international libraries (check our Hotspot Shield review for one of the best VPNs for streaming). We used Norton Secure VPN to access U.S Netflix, which is better than some VPNs can offer, but accessing the German Netflix was verboten. The story was the same for other streaming services as well: we used the VPN for HBO Max, but Disney+ was blocked, for example. This inconsistency was not ideal when we’re really in the mood to watch Aladdin.
• BitTorrent: It can’t be said enough, but we can’t condone illegal torrenting. With that out of the way, legal torrenting and P2P file sharing is a great way to download content (especially if you’re as into public domain movies from the 1940s as we are). Unfortunately, BitTorrent and peer-to-peer file sharing is banned for use on Norton Secure VPN, which is a bummer.

A Quick Word on Subscription Plans

One of the best parts about Norton Secure VPN is its price point. For a more broad look at the company and its offerings, check out this more in-depth Norton pricing overview. Norton offered three tiers of service based on the number of devices we wanted to cover: one, five, or 10. We were also able to get lower monthly rates by paying for a full year of service up front. Some of those tiers brought the price down to just over $3 per month, which is a great deal (though check out our CyberGhost VPN review for a sub-$3 service).

Here’s a quick look at how their plans compare:

We loved that Norton let us choose the number of devices we wanted to protect and priced its plans accordingly. Would you spend $11.95 on NordVPN’s monthly plan just to secure one device? Neither would we. With the Norton Secure VPN, you can choose to protect one, five, or 10 devices and not spend a penny more than you should.

Recapping Norton Secure VPN

As a standalone VPN, Norton Secure doesn’t have a whole lot to offer beyond basic privacy protection. But the truth is, this VPN isn’t necessarily intended to be a standalone service. When thought of as an add-on to a more robust antivirus system, Norton Secure makes a whole lot more sense. We were provided basic protection with minimal maintenance, and there was little customization or advanced features that required our attention. But along with this basic protection, we found some holes in the service, like a lack of a kill switch, some problematic privacy issues in logging our anonymized IP address, and issues with streaming services and BitTorrent support. Norton Secure is fine as a set-and-forget service, but for those interested in a serious, dedicated VPN, we’d recommend looking elsewhere.