I got a “love letter” from my ISP noting that I’d been illegally streaming some AMC+ show. I was like, “Oh shit! I’d better get a VPN.” I looked on the Amazon appstore and saw that they had a firestick version of Nord. Ok, great! But you have too pay for a year in advance – NOT great, but I did it.
The problem though is that UNLESS I’M MISSING SOMETIG REALLY OBVIOUS, there is no Kill Switch. So I’ll be watching something like “Gangs on London” on Stremio, suddenly there will be a little stutter in the stream, I’ll get suspicious, exit out of stremio and go back into NordVPN and it says “Disconnected from Server 1144” or whatever. What?! This is not good. This exposes my IP address immediately, does it not? Is there a way around this? I’d really hate to have to get a new ISP if they catch me again.
There is also an “AutoConnect” button on the app, but that doesn’t work the same way as a kill switch. Just logs you on when you start up your firestick.
Anyway, this feels like a huge security flaw unless I’m missing something…
Hey, NortonVPN user here on Firesticks and Fire TV Cube, I only use Norton to get apps that are geolock, but for Stremio i use Real Debrid + Torrentio.
Real debrid is awesome, if you need more info and setting everything Dm me.
Also i pay de monthly fee for Norton, and RD service is super cheap and you will not get any more letters, because RD has encrypted connection.
Hope this helps.
That’s the reason I use Surfshark instead for my VPN on the Firestick, as they have a fully functioning kill switch. And ironically, Nord owns Surfshark, which is very strange.
And this has nothing to do with Debrid, as I need my VPN for other things also, so have to have it. I recommend Surfshark.
I keep reading about this real debrid. I guess I need to find out what it is!! I really have no idea
I’ve seen it and Express VPN both recommended & both have kill switches. I used to have ExpressVPN. I canceled it but now I can’t remember why! I think it was slow?
Incidentally, I went for YEARS using Stremio with no VPN at all & then one day I get this email about this not-very-good AMC+ show. I guess I lucked out that I went for so long without getting caught.
Hey been googling with no answer so I will ask you. Any idea if surf shark on firestick can use the kill switch and the split tunneling (VPN app bypass) at the same time? Nord can’t do both so I might get surfshark
Costs like 3$/month, your ISP no longer sees if you are streaming anything illegally, and the best part, gives you high speed direct links so you dont have to rely on torrent quality or seed number.
Same thing happened to me when I was using IPVanish last year. I lost the connection and was using Stremio for a day or so without knowing I was off the VPN, but no letter thankfully.
I’m happy with the processing speeds on Surfshark, don’t really notice any difference when using it. It’s also got a really good ad-blocker in it as well.
It absolutely can. And with ease.
First, you toggle the “Kill Switch” to on. Then they give you two ways to set up the bypass/route VPN.
Say you have 40 apps on your Fire device, but you only need the VPN on 6 of those apps. Then you select the “route via VPN” option, and just put a checkmark on the six boxes of the apps you want using the VPN (thats the way I did it). Otherwise, you can choose the “bypass VPN” option and check off a lot more.
In that example I just gave you, the kill switch would then always be on those six that I checked. But all the others unaffected.
I’ve actually had the kill switch activate itself a few times on those impacted apps on my Fire Devices when SurfShark inadvertently got disconnected somehow.
Uh…The websites I’ve read about real debrid all say that you need a VPN otherwise your ISP can see you streaming copyrighted material.
How do you install it on Firestick? (just send a link if you have one – I don’t want you to have to type out a bunch of stuff!)
Fantastic answer thank you so much! Will get SS today for sure.
https://support.ipvanish.com/hc/en-us/articles/9877092799899-Why-we-don-t-have-a-Kill-Switch-for-IPVanish-for-the-Fire-Stick-TV
This seems to suggest that kill switches in fire stick apps can’t be trusted. It looks like they’re application layer only, meaning they could be killed off when the fire stick starts choking on itself lol.
You are probably reading something like traypoint lol. Real debrid is encrypted. Your ISP cannot see what you are downloading from them. When using real debrid you are no longer torrenting, you are downloading from RD servers on encrypted connection
Its not an app you can install… Its a service. Google real debrid. Buy it. Then install torrentio addon and add your real debrid account to it
Thanks. There’s two errors immediately when I read it.
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The Kill Switch doesn’t necessarily “kill off” your entire Internet connection unless you want it to do so. You can run as many apps (or internet browsers) on “bypass” from the Surfshark kill switch. I actually use the bypass on about 80% of the stuff on my device.
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The article also states that it is hard to run “kill switches” on FireSticks because they have “low end” processors. But what about Fire Cubes, and particularly the new Octa-core Fire Cube 3? That has “high end” processors that even outperform the Nvidia Shield Pros.
Ive been running the SurfShark Kill Switch option on my Fire Cubes for about two years now. There’s been dozens of times the “Kill Switch” got activated. Mostly because I temporarily lost my entire Internet Connection, and not just my SurfShark VPN connection. But there have been about maybe 4-5 times I did lose just the VPN connection, and the kill switch activated itself successfully.
I do admit there has been one instance where, I did lose the VPN connection and the kill switch failed to activate. I also use the backup flashing dot, and that alerted me to the issue.
So yes, the kill switch feature might not be perfect or infallible, but it certainly works darn good on my Fire Cubes.
Makes sense. It seems like a lot of these “how to” guides are just shills for VPNs
I have the torrentio addon installed and I bought 15 days of RD. Then I went into Stremio in my Firestick and scrolled down to the Torrentio addon. How do I add my RD account? It doesn’t seem intuitive
Thanks for the response. You’re right regarding the fire cube, but for anyone using an older firestick, that certainly won’t hold true. Whenever I’ve gotten rid of an old one, it’s been in a state of it barely being able to open the settings tab without crashing lol.
Yeah, I use the flashing dot too which seems to work nicely. It’ll never be a quick enough solution, and there will likely be some traffic, but at least it’ll be reduced to a couple of seconds!
I used surfshark a few years ago until they were leaking my IPv6. I contacted support, and they confirmed there was a bug in the app which caused it. I have since disabled my IPv6 and moved to another VPN provider - Nord (far from perfect).
I think the main point is, unless you’re willing to go to more extreme lengths, the app killswitch is probably good enough for most and is better than having no killswitch implementation at all!