Microsoft discontinues the VPN from Microsoft Defender, but no one cares
Not many users know about Microsoft's VPN in the first place
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Microsoft recently issued a support paper announcing that starting February 28, they will discontinue the Privacy Protection (VPN) from Microsoft Defender for individuals. That means you’ll be affected if you’ve got a Personal or Family Microsoft 365 account.
Microsoft introduced the Privacy Protection feature at the beginning of last year for Windows and extended it to the mobile application in September last year. Now, they decided that it was too much to offer, and they are outing it:
Why is Microsoft removing the privacy protection (VPN) feature from the Microsoft Defender app?
Our goal is to ensure you, and your family remain safer online. We routinely evaluate the usage and effectiveness of our features. As such, we are removing the privacy protection feature and will invest in new areas that will better align to customer needs.
In other words, they care about your family’s privacy, but you’re not really using this tool so they will invest in an app that you will actually need.
If you were relying on the Microsoft Defender VPN, you should steer towards another VPN solution. The good news is that Microsoft will not eliminate any other feature from Microsoft Defender. That means the device protection, identity theft, and credit monitoring (US) features will continue.
The outage news arrived on Reddit as well, but not many commenters seemed to know about its existence.
Some users said that they used the tool on a smartphone to protect their devices when connecting to public Wi-Fi in trains or hotels. Then again, Microsoft didn’t advertise this app too much so Defender VPN, we hardly knew you.
Did you use the Privacy Protection VPN from Microsoft Defender? Let us know in the comments below.
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