Express VPN - connected to iMac, or not?

Go here: https://whatismyipaddress.com/

If it returns a different location than your real location, the VPN is working.

If it returns your real location it may or may not be working. You should be able to change servers to test if your address is being "spoofed".

Unless you're using a true VPN tunnel, such as between you and your employer's, school's or bank's servers, they provide false security from a privacy standpoint and adversely affect system and application performance.  Read these two articles: Public VPN's are anything but private and Former Malware Distributor Kape Technologies Now Owns ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, Pivate Internet Access, Zenmate, and a Collection of VPN “Review” Websites. 

Just some food for thought.

For issues with third-party products, contact the vendor.

First-few-hops VPNs tend to badly solve problems which haven't existed for a decade or so, use weak encryption due to the well-known tunnel credentials, and leak metadata while doing it.

For the Apple-provided approach, use the existing end-to-end tunnels (these existing tunnels are what the first-few-hops VPNs will wrap, and too often badly), and enable Private Relay (part of iCloud+) to increase your privacy.

If you're doing geolocation shifting or CDN testing as differentiated from accessing the open internet, maybe a commercial first-few-hops VPN yes, or maybe set up Algo VPN server in your target geography.

To be honest any third party VPN for Mac OS is 100% worthless and will provide zero additional security over what Mac OS already provides.

what it will do though is slow down your Mac, make Mac OS appear buggy and create some very odd behaviour.

What you should do is locate the developers uninstall instructions and uninstall !!!

Really, it’s total garbage ware.

hcsitas wrote:

Check if you have the latest E-VPN version. Then (re)install, restart & reconnect. Meanwhile, ignore unsolicited lecturing on VPNs by people who clearly aren’t very knowledgeable on the stuff. It’s irritating, yes, but well-intentioned. Glaze over.

Please do explain the benefits over end-to-end TLS and with Private Relay and its ODoH, then.

Also why the personally-identified metadata arriving at the VPN vendor’s servers won’t be mined.

Definitely also please explain what problem VPNs actually solve that TLS, Private Relay, and ODoH don’t.

Check if you have the latest E-VPN version. Then (re)install, restart & reconnect.

[Edited by Moderator]