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Step-By-Step: Changing a Public VPN to Private in Windows 10

AnthonyBartolo's avatar
Apr 16, 2019

Have a need to hide your VPN connections from public view? Here is a quick and easy way to change the visibility of your VPN connection in Windows 10 from public to private. It will require a registry edit and as such best practice would dictate that making a backup of said registry before proceeding would be a good idea.

 

  1. Run RegEdit and navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\Profiles
      
  2. Click through the list of profiles presented to find the desired VPN name detailed under ProfileName within the right pane
            
  3. Double click Category once the correct profile has been found and change the value data to 1
     
  4. Reboot the computer Once completed, the VPN connection will no longer be visible. These steps will work with Windows 10 Home as well as Windows 10 Pro.

 

Updated Apr 27, 2021
Version 3.0
  • ConstMe's avatar
    ConstMe
    Copper Contributor

    Thanks, that works. But the text is misleading.

     

    Changing network type from public to private does not hide VPN connection from public view.
    It’s doing exactly the opposite.

    This lifts firewalls restrictions exposing private resources (like shared drives) of the current computer to that network.

  • ryanps3's avatar
    ryanps3
    Copper Contributor

    Microsoft are little better than the android software. I know pretty much a;; thje short cuts on all the above