What is Surfshark's Antivirus Web Protection?

In this article, you will learn about Surfshark Antivirus' Web Protection feature and how to use it.

In order to proceed, you will need to have the Surfshark app installed on your Windows device alongside a Surfshark One subscription, which you can purchase on Surfshark pricing page

The Web Protection feature protects you from malware and phishing websites even before anything is downloaded or inputted online. It does so by checking every URL on your browser or any other program on your computer that is accessing a website and determines whether it is malicious or not.

How to use Surfshark's Antivirus Web protection

In order for Web Protection to fully protect you from malicious websites, we need to install a root certificate on the operating system.

Open the Antivirus tab and click on Install Antivirus if you haven't done so before.
Once you're in the Antivirus dashboard, enable Web protection by toggling the slider. Once the slider is toggled right, Web protection is on.
To manage which websites are not affected by Web protection, click on Exclusions list.
Select the Websites tab and click on Add a website.
Enter the URL of the website you wish to exclude from Web protection. If you wish for all subdomains to be excluded too, tick the box Apply to all subdomains.
Once added, you will see the website in the exclusion list. To add more websites, click on Add a website again and repeat the process.
In order to remove a website from the exclusion list, click on the x button next to it.
If a malicious download is detected, it will get blocked and you will get the following notification.
If a malicious website is detected, it will get blocked and you will get the following notification:

How Surfshark Web protection works

In order for Web Protection to fully protect you from malicious websites, a root certificate is automatically installed on your device. The root certificate is important for two reasons:

Secure Communication: root certificates ensure secure communication over the internet. When a web browser encounters a website, it checks the website’s digital certificate against a list of trusted root certificates to verify the website’s authenticity and ensure encrypted communication.
Preventing Man-in-the-Middle Attacks: root certificates help prevent man-in-the-middle attacks where an attacker intercepts communication between two parties.

It is important to note that Surfshark or any other third party does not have access to any data the certificate might communicate over the internet.

Our root certificate works only when using Surfshark Antivirus and does not synchronize with other Surfshark services. The root certificate is generated and used locally on your computer and cannot be used to identify activity.