A the rather poor experience with an F-Secure "expert" on the chat.

N3O

Hi there,

I recently had some trouble and questions regarding Freedome and F-SAFE on iOS devices. I contacted an F-Secure expert on the chat for some answers and advice, but the experience was rather poor.

First, the english of the expert in question wasn't thge best, and considering that one gets to chose the language, this shouldn't happen. But far worse than the language, in my opinion, were the answers - and questions - I received from the expert I chatted with. I'm now rather confused, and I'm not sure I understood the functionality and effective protections that these two products - F-SAFE and Freedome - really provide.

The answers that I got don't reflect what I was expecting from these two products, and maybe it's my fault for not understanding them well, but I can also not easily fill in the blanks by searching for more info on the website itself. The final answers that the expert gave me regarding the protection offered by the products in question say that:

"Basically our program only basic protection for email on your computer. Freedome program only will protect your computer when you are online using the a public internet connection."

I wouldn't really agree with them from what I understand that both products do, but I want to make sure that this is - or isn't - my own misunderstanding.

My basic questions would be: what protection does Freedome and F-SAFE offer regarding the privacy of my e-mails, and if the expert says that the protection offered for thge e-mails on my computer is only a basic protection, which F-Secure product would be advanced or better?

I would post the whole chat, but I don't know if that would in some way be considered inappropriate according to the guidelines.

Any clarification would help.

Inofor

Well that's just silly. It seems as if they didn't know their own product.

 

As I understand it, F-Secure SAFE is their rebranded antivirus. It comes with a browser addon that features banking protection (basically blocks stuff that isn't needed for banking while you bank), browsing protection (a reputation system for websites based on reports) and parental controls.

 

Freedome is a VPN and it encrypts your connection. If you, for example, went on a website that used SSL encryption, your ISP would still see the name of the website even though the contents would be encrypted. With a VPN they only see encrypted traffic. I have no confident information on how SSL on email looks from ISP's perspective, but with a VPN such as freedome it'll be just an indistinguishable bunch of encrypted traffic. A VPN is especially useful on public connections because if a login doesn't use encryption, it'll throw the login through the connection as plaintext information. This basically means that any script kiddie with Firesheep could grab your pass if they're sitting in the same café. Freedome features a similar browsing protection (reputation-based block). A feature that Freedome has but SAFE doesn't, is blocking of tracking scripts. For me the ticker count is increasing pretty slowly since I'm using noscript, so I'd wager it blocks things like google analytics. I consider this feature useful since it does some work even though I've been rather careful about allowing scripts in noscript.

 

Now, what does this mean for your email? Basically, people on the same public wifi can't read your emails when you're using a VPN. If you use a SSL connection on your email, that should have a similar effect. Your ISP can't see you read your email either when you're on your home connection, if you use a VPN. I would also imagine that the site reputation features would help a bit against phishing in emails.

 

End-to-end encryption is the main feature of a VPN and F-Secure has added a few extra features on top of that with Freedome. Using a VPN means that you trust the VPN provider with your data. The fact that the company is located in Finland makes them a bit more trustworthy than the competition for legal and government reasons. While there are currently some speed problems (I'm getting 10-20mbps with a 100mbps connection while another VPN could provide like 80mbps), that trustworthiness is the reason I'm using F-Secure's VPN.

[Deleted User]

Hi N3O,

 

Welcome to our Community! But I am sorry to hear about your experience with the chat Support regarding your question!

 

In this case, I would try to check on the respective chat you had with our support personnel for further understanding of your issue. Would you please send me a private message of your case number you had created with our support chat for me to look further?