Banking protection not working with Proton VPN

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: bank protection.

BimBam

Recently the banking protection banner failed to show.

I followed all the possible steps according the KB article and discussed with my internet provider. I had the problem on all my computers at home, desktops and laptops.

Then I reinstalled Windows 10 Home freshly on a friend's laptop, downloaded and installed the latest Windows 10 updates and added F-Secure Safe. At first the banking protection banner did not show but a while later it did. Why, I do not know, but it continued to work.

The only difference between my friend's laptop and for instance my desktop, was on the latter I use Proton VPN. Until recently F-Secure Banking Protection worked fine with Proton VPN switched on. To my surprise however, when I switched off Proton VPN, the baking protection banner did show.

I assume that a recent Proton VPN update is the cause for blocking the F-Secure banking protection.

The answer from Proton VPN: "... As anti-virus/firewall applications such as the F-Secure one are known to interfere with VPN connection by marking them as malicious, could you please try excluding/whitelisting the ProtonVPN application within your antivirus software and then check if the issue persists?..."

I asked Proton VPN which file to look for that I need to exclude or whitelist in F-Secure...

Jaims

Hi @BimBam

In reality, the 2 products should work concurrently without any issue but in the case where this happens as you have described, try excluding the 3rd party VPN on your F-Secure SAFE program using the steps below in order to exclude it from Real-time scanning:

1. Open the F-Secure user interface 
2. Click on Tools
3. Click App and file control
4. Select the Excluded tab
5. Click Add new
6. Select the folder or file that you want to exclude
7. Click OK

Once the file or folder has been excluded, Real-time scanning or DeepGuard will not scan the files anymore. 

BimBam

Hi Jaims,

I have gone through all the possible solutions F-Secure has offered but the Banking Protection banner fails to show when I use ProtonVPN. I also contacted my internet provider who also provides F-Secure as part of the package.

ProtonVPN has proposed a solution which they claim has worked for other users. I have implemented that solution once but during the procedure not everything went the way it should be, for whatever reason. It is time consuming and I stopped repeating the procedure.

I noticed that F-Secure installed update One Client SAFE 4.40. 3267 on Nov. 23,2020, and briefly I saw that it included an "improvement" on the Banking Protection, although I do not know what the improvement entails. But the Banking Protection banner still does not show...

I now turn off ProtonVPN while doing internet banking with the Banking Protection banner showing.

When both F-Secure and ProtonVPN release and install updates at the same time, it is, for me at least, impossible to determine which update caused the change in the Banking protection banner behavior.

Jaims

Hi @BimBam

Yes our Banking Protection user interface has been redesigned to border the entire windows in green colour during the banking session as opposed to only the top that we used to have.

Since the issue still persists, we might have to investigate further by requesting for some details but before then, I would recommend you run all pending important windows updates, reinstall both F-Secure SAFE and the Proton VPN then try to reproduce the issue and let us know the outcome.