Norton VPN Review

Norton VPN’s reworked privacy policy is a major improvement.

It now clearly lays out everything the VPN collects, how long it’s retained for, and the reasons for doing so. Crucially, the VPN no longer logs your real IP address, making it much harder to identify you.

That said, it’s still not a ‘no-logs’ policy and some of the logging is questionable. For instance, I’m not a fan of Norton monitoring your connections to the VPN and the server location you’re connecting to.

This data can’t be linked to you because Norton doesn’t record the exact time of your connection. However, when combined with other information a third party may have about you (e.g. your ISP’s record of when you went online), it could be used to build a profile of you.

I also discovered that Norton VPN actively shares your usage data with third parties, like Google Firebase, to “improve user experience”. Thankfully, this can be disabled by turning off the toggle in the privacy settings of your Norton VPN app.

It’s not just the data processing that troubles me, but the lack of third-party proof. Norton’s privacy policy has passed an audit, but this isn’t foolproof given VPN services can limit the scope of an audit.

Until I see real-world proof of Norton’s claims, like a server seizure or court case, I can’t be certain its privacy policy holds up.

Based in the US

Norton VPN is based in the United States, which is among the worst locations for user privacy. The US has very intrusive surveillance laws and is a member of the Five Eyes international intelligence-sharing alliance.

For example, the Stored Communications Act (SCA) requires Norton to hand over all the information it stores on a user if requested by the US government.

Given I’m still not completely convinced by Norton’s privacy policy, it’s safer to choose a VPN with a proven no-logs track record like Private Internet Access.

Norton VPN has improved month-on-month in my streaming tests. Norton now unblocks 6 Netflix regions: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, UK, and US.

In my experience, the VPN unblocks US Netflix with a 50% success rate. While that’s lower than my top-rated VPNs manage, it’s still a decent return.

Norton VPN often works with US Netflix on the second attempt.

These results are broadly representative of Norton VPN’s overall streaming performance, with its strongest performance on English-language platforms.

While connected to a US server, I streamed Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and HBO Max from overseas without any issues. I put this success down to Norton VPN’s large US server network, which covers 19 states.

This lets you cycle through different US IP addresses until one works and enables you to bypass state-level geo-restrictions. For example, I connected to a Norton server in California while physically in New York to stream a California sports broadcast.

I had moderate success with UK streaming services too. The VPN worked with ITVX, Disney+, Channel 4, and, to my surprise, BBC iPlayer.

Norton VPN unblocked BBC iPlayer on all five of its UK server locations.

That’s the limit of its UK unblocking ability, as I found myself blocked from Now TV, Sky Go, and the UK version of HBO Max.

If you want to access content catalogs from any other countries, the VPN performs miserably. I received numerous error codes, or was unable to log in, when attempting to stream titles in Australia, Italy, France, Japan, and many others.

Even when I could access platforms in these countries, like Australian Netflix, my stream took ages to load and was often blurry.

For consistent international access, I suggest using Windscribe. It unblocks the most Netflix libraries of any VPN I test, as well as a wide array of foreign-language platforms.

These results can be confusing, but the general trend is a positive one. Norton VPN never decreased my download speed by more than 20%, across every location that I test. That included connections to VPN servers in Australia and South Africa.

On a nearby New York server, my download speed dropped by 10%. In isolation, this is a good result, but it becomes somewhat anomalous when you compare it to a speed loss of just 4% in Brazil and Canada.

Connecting to a VPN server in Canada delivered faster speeds than a server in nearby New York.

It’s odd that more distant servers were faster than my closest on. This randomness ultimately makes Norton VPN a poor choice if you need a consistent internet connection.

Norton VPN now supports WireGuard in all of its apps. This is a secure and widely used VPN protocol that you can trust with your personal data.

WireGuard tunnels your web traffic and the ChaCha20-Poly1305 cipher encrypts it. I tested this first-hand by running my VPN connection through a data packet analyzer:

I used Wireshark to inspect my Norton VPN traffic.

As shown in the image above, the VPN encrypted my online activity and Wireshark showed it only as unreadable data.

You can also use Norton’s custom-built Mimic protocol, which bypasses censorship by disguising your VPN traffic as standard web traffic.

It’s closed-source, meaning I can’t verify its security, but the protocol has been thoroughly audited by VerSprite (a reputable cybersecurity company).

Its audit confirmed Mimic is safe to use and that it incorporates post-quantum encryption. This is an excellent addition that very few VPNs offer, and is essential for protecting against ‘Store Now, Decrypt Later’ cyber attacks.

As part of my security analysis, I also tested for IP, DNS, and WebRTC leaks. Norton VPN passed every test, which is great to see given its past DNS and IP leaks.

I checked to see if its VPN kill switch worked properly following an unexpected disconnection. As it has done for some time now, the kill switch activated, cut my internet, and stopped my data from leaking.

Norton VPN has fixed its earlier kill switch issues.

To build on these improvements, Norton needs to make its VPN apps’ source code public. While it has already undergone multiple audits, making the apps open source would allow the entire cybersecurity community to inspect them.

In turn, this would enable vulnerabilities to be spotted sooner and fixed much faster, improving the VPN’s overall security.

I can’t emphasize enough how much Norton VPN has improved its server coverage. It now has 10 times as many server locations in Asia, ans has added several in Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

This fixes an imbalance in its old network, when 66% of Norton’s servers were concentrated in Europe. I’m pleased to see its servers dispersed over a much wider area now.

I’m splitting hairs here, but I’d like to see servers added to Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and sub-Saharan Africa generally.

A selection of Norton VPN’s server locations.

The other noteworthy improvement is the addition of city-level choice in eight countries, including Australia, the UK, and the US. This is useful for watching local news and getting around sports blackouts.

Norton VPN has also confirmed that every server is physically located where it says it is. In other words, it doesn’t use virtual servers, which are often hosted elsewhere.

The advantage of Norton’s all-physical server network is faster speeds, since you’re really connecting to the location it claims. The disadvantage is that it can’t provide IP addresses in countries where hosting a VPN server is unwise, like China and Russia.

Norton’s apps maintain visual parity across platforms, with the signature Norton yellow color for action buttons, a soft map gradient, and crisp white cards in the foreground. All in all, I find the apps modern, pleasant, and easy to follow.

Here’s how I found using the apps across each operating system:

Norton VPN originally blocked torrenting activity on all servers except the Netherlands, but has since added four more locations: Australia, Japan, Spain, and the US.

Norton VPN delivers fast file-sharing speeds as long as you’re near a P2P server.

To access these servers, go into your connection settings and find ‘P2P-Optimized Region’. Attempting to torrent while connected to a standard server causes the app to block your download.

This is still highly restrictive, especially compared to VPNs like Surfshark and IPVanish that don’t impose any limits on torrenting.

At the very least, I’d like to see more P2P server locations added to the Southern Hemisphere and more options in Europe.

If you’re lucky enough to be located near one of its P2P servers, then the download speed is very fast. In my experience, the torrent files downloaded almost as quickly as on my regular internet connection.

The biggest blockers to Norton VPN’s device compatibility are its lack of router support and Smart DNS proxy. Without either, you can’t use the VPN on devices that don’t support native VPN apps, such as game consoles.

Given Norton has completely ignored Linux for its flagship antivirus product, I’m not too hopeful about a Linux app appearing any time soon.

Depending on which pricing plan you choose, Norton allows you to install its VPN on five or 10 devices at once. Most VPNs, like NordVPN and PrivateVPN, let you connect 10 devices on their lowest subscription tier, so Norton’s limit feels strict.

A device will count towards this cap even if it’s not connected to the VPN, which can be frustrating.

Norton has finally released VPN browser extensions; however, you can only install them via its desktop apps. This is unusual, as you can normally download an extension directly from the Chrome Web Store.

Norton VPN continues to work in China. I tested this myself by remotely connecting to a test machine in Shanghai.

I suggest you use the Mimic protocol for the best results, since it’s designed to disguise your VPN traffic and bypass censors.

Most servers worked in my testing, but for minimal latency I suggest using the Hong Kong server location.

Norton VPN includes a multi-hop (double VPN) feature that routes your internet connection through two servers instead of one.

This makes it much harder to track you as a third party would need to monitor two different VPN servers.

Multi-hop is undeniably useful, but Norton limits you to just 16 possible server combinations. Even worse, the entry and exit locations are all geographically close, e.g. US and Canada, UK and Germany, New Zealand and Australia.

Norton VPN doesn’t let you switch to WireGuard when using double VPN.

I’d much prefer it if Norton copied Surfshark’s approach of letting you choose any of its server locations as the entry and exit nodes. This would allow you to better tailor the multi-hop connection to your requirements.

Just as bad, you can only use this feature with the outdated IPsec protocol. This is an older protocol that’s widely suspected to have been compromised.

Norton VPN includes split tunneling in its Windows, macOS, and Android apps. This is a feature that lets you exclude specific apps from the VPN tunnel.

For example, you may want to access your banking app as normal, while routing the rest of your device’s traffic to the VPN server.

I found it simple to use, but was disappointed there wasn’t an option to choose which apps go through the VPN tunnel instead. More often than not, there are only one or two apps whose location I want to change, while I’d rather leave the rest unaffected.

Plenty of VPNs offer this: Hide.me and PIA both do.

I selected location-dependent apps for split tunneling.

Norton VPN includes a rotating IP feature in six locations: Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US.

This automatically refreshes your VPN IP address every 30 seconds, without breaking your connection, to make it harder to track you online.

I really liked using this feature: it didn’t disturb my browsing and I noticed fewer targeted ads as a result. However, six locations simply isn’t enough, and users in South America and Africa are left without any nearby rotating-IP servers.

The IP rotation feature works automatically once enabled.