What is a VPN kill switch and do I really need one?
I keep seeing kill switch listed as an important VPN feature but it is one of those settings I have never really understood.
From what I can tell, the idea is that if the VPN connection drops, your internet connection gets blocked instead of your device simply going back to the normal connection. That makes sense but I am not sure how important that is for someone who mainly uses a VPN for normal browsing and occasionally connects to public Wifi.
I also noticed that some VPNs have different versions of the feature and some call it things like network lock or always on VPN. That makes it even harder to tell whether these are basically doing the same thing or not.
For people who actually keep a VPN kill switch enabled, has it ever made a difference for you? Is this something most VPN users should leave turned on or is it mainly useful for specific situations?
Trying to understand what the feature actually protects against before enabling settings I do not really understand.