Anyone have an explanations for this? I am perlexed

Hello. First of all sorry for my non perfect English.

My question it about this: I am volunteer in a Spanish non-profit, and recently we received some phishing email attempts. Emails that, apparently, came from the government, but that when I put the mouse pointer above their links I saw they redirected to domains (with sometimes poor fake government pages) that doesn’t have anything to do with the real government.

My question is: when I don’t have activated the VPN, that obviously fake links redirects to false web pages… but when I have activated the VPN, usually the false URL redirects to the real government pages! How that can be? Is the VPN of Avast using some sort of list of phishing domains and redirecting to the real web pages? With the real IP from my country, false web page (or no web page directly), with the VPN on and a IP from another country, I go to the real government web page ¿?

Thanks a lot!

Sounds like you have a solid guess. I don’t know for sure, thought.

I… uh… still would advise against indulging your curiosity clicking on links to sites you know are “fakes”. Drive-by-downloads / zero-click is a thing. You can potentially get a machine infected without ever actually accepting to download or open some malware. Just by connecting to certain sites without proper protections you can be at risk.

So… Please just don’t click those links? But good on you for recognizing that they are false.

Do you have Avast Real Site turned on?

See attached below:

VPN or Virtual Private Network is a way of encrypting your network connection between your system and the website you are connected to and visiting. It hides your actual IPv4 address and will say you are at another Ipv4 address located elsewhere other than where you actually are.

A VPN connection will not prevent you from being infected; it only makes your connection more secure than it would be otherwise.

Hello. Thanks for your answers. No, although I pay for the Avast VPN services, my Avast Antivirus is the free edition, so as long as I saw, I don’t have Avast Real Site.

Thanks again!

https://d1ka0itfguscri.cloudfront.net/Lh/2024/03/12/00/22/cZelc3V7eyF/preview.jpg

As you can see from the image, Real Site requires an upgrade.