You’ve known for years that you need antivirus protection to prevent malware from infecting your devices. Your devices and data should be safe once you’ve cleared out any pre-existing conditions and activated real-time protection. However, when you send and receive data across the internet, your local antivirus protection no longer applies.
A virtual private network (VPN) protects your data in transit, encrypting it and sending it to a VPN server, which then forwards it to the wider internet. Nobody, not even the owner of the network you’re using, can interfere with that encrypted transmission, and the websites you’re connecting to see the VPN server as the traffic source, hiding your personal IP address and location.
Previously, ESET’s VPN component was only available at the Home Security Ultimate level. Now, even those who selected the Premium level get VPN access. There’s still a difference—Premium uses get three VPN licenses while those at the Ultimate level get 10. The VPN is licensed from Windscribe, though ESET doesn’t make much of this partnership. The standalone Windscribe VPN, which is an Editors’ Choice winner.
Getting Started With the VPN
Clicking the VPN panel in the Overview window doesn’t launch the VPN. Rather, it instructs you to install the app on your Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices and generate a one-time code to activate each installation. You can also generate a code to share VPN protection with friends.
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When you launch the VPN, you see a tall window with a Connect button. By default, it chooses the best server location, displayed at the bottom of the window, but you can dig in to make your own choice. The mostly empty window displays the selected protocol and your current IP address—your true address when disconnected or the VPN server’s address otherwise. A world map very faintly backdrops these controls, though it doesn’t center or tag your chosen server, as some competitors do.
Plenty of Server Locations
Using a VPN with servers in plenty of locations worldwide has two benefits. First, your chances of finding a nearby server are better wherever you go. Second, if you need the VPN’s help to spoof your location, you have many choices. Windscribe’s comprehensive list of servers shows 192 locations across 71 countries, including three in Africa and seven in South America. That’s an unusually impressive spread, though CyberGhost VPN goes even further. CyberGhost has servers in 126 cities, spread across 100 countries.
I noticed in passing that ESET’s list of locations doesn’t include everything on Windscribe’s online list. Oh, all the servers in the ESET list show up in Windscribe’s, right down to jokey server names like Hong Kong Phooey and Miami Vice. But quite a few of Windscribe’s servers don’t carry over to ESET’s server list. ESET has servers in 85 cities spread across 41 countries, which beats many competitors. However, over 90% of them are in Europe or North America. ESET offers no servers in Africa, and for South America, only Brazil is represented.
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Clicking any item in the list opens a submenu of server locations within that country. Pointing the mouse at a three-bar icon to the right of a server displays a quick view of latency if known. Quite a few servers feature an icon indicating they offer a 10Gbps connection. A few servers display a different icon, indicating they frown on file sharing.
Plenty of Protocol Choices
I mentioned that your VPN uses an encryption system (called a protocol) to protect communication between your PC and the VPN server. The OpenVPN protocol is well-regarded because it’s an open-source project, allowing experts to audit it and identify potential problems. WireGuard is a newer, slicker open-source VPN protocol and a current favorite around PCMag.
Some VPN apps stick with a single protocol or make an internal choice of protocols without consulting the user. ESET uses WireGuard by default, but if you click the protocol name, you open a big menu of choices, more than in most competing VPNs. Topping the list is WireGuard, followed by the relatively antiquated IKEv2 protocol. The next three—UDP, TCP, and Stealth—are all variations of OpenVPN. The Stealth choice disguises your traffic as ordinary HTTPS traffic to evade anti-VPN technology. WSTunnel is another OpenVPN variant designed to bypass VPN blockers. It masquerades as WebSocket traffic rather than HTTPS.
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If you’re connecting to or from a country that tries to suppress VPN use, consider the Stealth or WSTunnel protocols. These can also help with services like Netflix that actively discourage VPN use. Windscribe is among the VPNs that successfully evaded video streaming blocks in our testing, along with CyberGhost, NordVPN, Proton VPN, and others.
Advanced VPN Features and Settings
In the settings dialog, you can configure the locations list to display each server’s system load. With this feature active, a green bar below each server location shows the current load on that server, so you can avoid choosing one that’s overloaded. The location list is sorted by geography out of the box, but you can choose to sort it by latency, or simply show an alphabetical list. I’d be happier if these sorting options were available in the location list itself. You can turn off the option to have the VPN launch at startup (but don’t, please), choose its display language, and set it to light or dark mode.
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Running your traffic through a VPN necessarily impacts its speed. You may find some websites or apps for which you prefer speed over security. That’s where split tunneling comes in. In the default Exclusive mode, you list the websites or applications that should connect directly to the web without going through the VPN. The optional Inclusive mode applies VPN protection only to the apps and sites you specify. Most users should stick with the default Exclusive.
ESET also offers a VPN feature with the violent-sounding name kill switch. This just means that if the VPN loses connectivity with its server, it blocks all internet traffic until the connection is restored. This prevents exposing your traffic with no VPN protection.
ESET’s VPN doesn’t carry over some advanced features, like Windscribe’s ability to filter out malware and porn sites, and it doesn’t appear to reach Windscribe’s full range of server locations. Even so, its selection of server locations is impressive, especially if you focus on Europe and North America. It has an unusually broad selection of protocols, and its advanced features include split tunneling and a kill switch. In addition, it provides useful information about server latency and load to help you choose the best server for your needs. Ultimately, you won’t go wrong with the VPN included with the ESET Home Security Premium bundle.
