I have an Orbi router. Recently, I installed the Netgear Armor and Bitdefender apps on my local devices, including some iOS devices.
A scan of each iOS device revealed a recommendation to enable “Web Protection.” As I understood from its initial description, “Web Protection” is only a special DNS server controlled by Bitdefender that filters out traffic with IP addresses that are known to distribute malware. Seemed like a relatively simple and lightweight form of protection, so I enabled it.
I do not want or need Bitdefender VPN. All of our traffic goes through either our ISP, our cellular provider, or a private VPN server of our choice. I didn’t enable the Bitdefender VPN option in the Armor app, and I didn’t install the iOS Bitdefender VPN on my devices.
All seemed fine until this evening, when I noticed that one (and only one?) of the iOS devices actually shows “VPN” indicator at the top of the display. Also, reading this page about Web Protection raises some confusion:
While browsing, you can unknowingly access dangerous pages that attempt to steal and use your personal data. Bitdefender Mobile Security’s Web Protection filters traffic from all apps and blocks everything that poses a threat to your data. It also adds an encryption layer to prevent your data from being mishandled.
…which definitely sounds more like a full-fledged VPN than a simple DNS server.
What’s going on here? Can anyone explain how Web Protection differs from Bitdefender VPN? Thanks for your help.