Norton Secure VPN Review

Video Review

Privacy and Security Concerns With Norton

Our latest research on VPN usage has found that 40-percent of VPN users opt to use VPNs for general privacy. That’s because a VPN can hide your browsing activity through encryption. But the truth is that to do that, your VPN provider will have exclusive access to your traffic. If the company wants to, it can collect your data and sell it for its own profit.

Of course, none of our top-pick VPN providers do that. But how about Norton? Can you trust it?

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.

Now, there are two types of data VPN providers typically collect. One is personal data you provide when accessing the Norton website and creating an account, and the other is usage data, which refers to any information collected by the service when you connect to the VPN.

Although Norton collects data like your IP address and geolocation when you visit its website, it doesn’t collect those kinds of information when you use the VPN itself. Norton Secure is a “no-logs” VPN, which means it doesn’t collect any data that can identify you when using the VPN. That means your usage data is private, even from Norton.

When it comes to your personal data, however, 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 6,300 servers in more than 111 countries – and it’s still growing.

Unfortunately, Norton Secure VPN doesn’t compare to that. It has 1,500 servers that offer locations in 29 countries. That’s only about a quarter of NordVPN’s server network, both in terms of the number of servers and locations.

Moreover, we learned that up to 1,200 of Norton’s servers are virtual servers. Unlike physical servers that provide IP addresses pointing to where the server is physically located, virtual servers only mimic the presence of physical servers. For example, with a physical server, if the data center is located in the United States, the VPN IP addresses it will provide will be U.S. IP addresses. With a virtual server, even if the server is physically located in New York, it’s possible to set it up in a way that it provides IP addresses from Canada. Virtual servers give VPN companies a cost-effective way to increase their footprint.

We’re not totally against virtual servers. Even NordVPN uses virtual servers, which is how it was able to jump from having 60 locations to 111. However, when a VPN’s almost entire network is made up of virtual servers, it makes us question the legitimacy of its network size. Does it really have the physical ability to provide access through 1,500 servers, or is that an illusion created by its virtual network? We don’t jump to conclusions, but let’s just say our speed with Norton was less than optimal.

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: VPNs aren’t perfect, which means there may be times when they would disconnect abruptly in the middle of a browsing session. No one wants that, as losing your VPN connection means getting your online data exposed to your ISP. The solution? A kill switch. If you lose VPN connection, your device’s internet connection pauses until you reconnect the VPN. It’s a crucial feature, but unfortunately, only the Android and Windows apps offer a kill switch.
• 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.