It’s probably leaking.
That’s how all the traffic would pass without being seen.
But in the case of iOS, it doesn’t end and restart all the existing connections."
Dan Nelson / Unsplash.com
They not only hide the actual data being sent and received, but they can also hide your location.
Nobody can see anything along the way.
Not your ISP, nobody.
Prostock Studio / Getty Images
The important part here is the ‘100%’ part.
VPNs are only useful if they route everything.
Otherwise, why bother?
“VPNs on iOS are broken.
At first, they appear to work fine,” Horowitz writes his blog post.
Data leaves the iOS equipment outside of the VPN tunnel."
The problem isn’t limited to one vendor or service.
Horowitz tested this on multiple services and found the same problem.
The leak is in iOS itself, and it’s not new.
Proton VPNfirst reported the leak in March 2020.
This, says Proton, kind of works but still allows some data to leak.
Dangers
What does this mean for you, the VPN user?
Well, it depends on what you use it for.
If all you’re doing is using a VPN to stream video from another country, then no problem.
If that happens, you just quit the app and reconnect.
The problem here is one of trust.
A VPN has one job; if it cannot do that job, how can you trust it?
Prostock Studio / Getty Images
One option is that you might reconsider using an iOS equipment altogether.
That could be enough to pinpoint you on a map using your IP address.
“iOS users can still use VPN apps to protect themselves from ads and trackers.”
VPNs are always difficult.
You really have to vet them well because they are routing everything that leaves and enters your phone/computer.
If you choose the wrong one, it could be worse than not using one at all.
