AV-TEST Evaluates Additional Security Features for VPN Services
AV-TEST has evaluated the capabilities of five popular VPN services to block malicious URLs and phishing sites in a September-October 2024 comparison. The test also assessed false positive rates.
The research institute AV-TEST has released a report evaluating the additional security features of five prominent VPN services. A comparative test conducted in September and October 2024 examined ExpressVPN, IPVanish VPN, Mullvad VPN, NordVPN, and Proton VPN for their ability to block malicious URLs and phishing websites.
The test, commissioned by NordSec and performed by AV-TEST, specifically focused on the effectiveness of these VPN services in detecting and preventing access to malicious links. This included links leading directly to portable executable (PE) malware, other types of malicious files such as HTML and JavaScript, and phishing URLs. A total of 3,209 malicious samples were tested.
In addition to threat detection, the evaluation assessed the rate of false positives. This measure indicates how often the VPN services incorrectly flag legitimate websites or downloaded files as harmful. The false positive testing involved downloading popular applications and visiting a range of popular, verified clean websites. AV-TEST also conducted 2,298 test cases to determine if the security features caused any disruption during normal user activity.
NordSec had no influence on the test methodology or the selection of samples. AV-TEST confirmed that all tested links were active at the time of the evaluation. Comprehensive details regarding the test setup and scenarios are available in the full report.