Few things are more annoying than this: the shield icon is on, the app says “Protected” — and no page opens. It looks like one bug, but it is really several different situations wearing the same face. Let's take them one by one, from the most common to the rarest, with a fix for each.
In short. There are five causes, most common first: your paid access has run out; the network you are sitting on is interfering; a café or hotel Wi-Fi is waiting for you to press “Log in” on its own page; the phone put the app to sleep; or it is one site that will not open rather than the whole internet. The first thing to try is to disconnect and connect again — the app will walk its paths from the top.
We build Mayak. The app watches the quality of the path itself and falls back to a backup channel when the direct one weakens. 3 days free once you confirm your email, no card required. The trial is free and needs no card; without an email it is 1 day.
🍎 On iPhone Mayak works through the third-party Happ app — with the subscription link from your account. Happ is not in the Russian App Store; there INCY (publisher LLC ITDEV) works instead, checked on 22 September 2026.
Why “connected” doesn't mean “working”
A secure connection is an agreement between your device and a server: the two sides exchange keys and establish an encrypted channel. The icon reports exactly that fact — and nothing more. After that, every packet still has to cross your carrier's network, and plenty can happen to it on the way: the channel stays up while the packets quietly go missing. “Connected” and “the internet works” are two separate facts, and the second does not follow from the first.
That's why Mayak doesn't trust the icon. Once the tunnel is up, the app sends a real request through it and only calls the connection good when an answer comes back from the outside world. And if traffic dies on an already-working connection, the app says so in plain words: “There is a connection, but no traffic — reconnect”. Most of the time you'll never need this article, because the app notices trouble before you do. But the causes are worth knowing — sometimes the network isn't the problem at all.
Reason 1: your access has run out
The most common cause, and it looks exactly like this: the tunnel comes up, but traffic no longer flows. That's not spite, it's how the system works — an encrypted channel and the right to use the exit are two different things.
What to do. Open Settings in the app and check the bottom of the screen: it shows the date your access runs until. If it has passed, renewing takes a couple of minutes in your account — access comes back as soon as the payment clears.
Reason 2: the network you're on right now
Mobile networks vary wildly. On one, everything sails through; on another, encrypted traffic hits interference — packets get dropped or delayed. It can come down not even to the carrier but to the specific cell tower and the time of day.
What to do. Tap Disconnect, then Connect. On reconnection Mayak retries its paths — direct, via a nearby entry point, via the backup channel — and picks whichever is alive on this network. If that doesn't help, try another country from the list. And if the direct path never works on your home network, turn on “Always use backup channel” in Settings so the app stops spending time on probing. How those three paths work is a story of its own.
Reason 3: Wi‑Fi with a login screen
Hotels, cafés, airports, trains: the network wants you to tap “Agree” on its own page first, and until you do, it lets almost nothing through. A secure connection gets in its own way here — it hides that login page from you, and the network stays silent in return. The symptom is the same: “connected”, but nothing loads.
What to do. Disconnect Mayak, open any site in your browser — the Wi-Fi login page will appear. Sign in, make sure the internet works, then bring Mayak back up.
Reason 4: the phone put the app to sleep
When the screen goes dark, Android starts saving battery and may evict Mayak from memory — in your pocket, on the subway, overnight. Protection drops at that moment, and the phone is left without internet until you open the app again. From the outside it looks like “everything was fine — and suddenly nothing works”.
What to do. One system setting fixes it — always-on VPN: the phone itself then keeps the tunnel up and restores it after sleep and reboots. In the app: Settings → Protection → “No protection — no internet”; the button opens the right Android screen. The full walkthrough is in the help centre.
Reason 5: one site is down, not the internet
If mail and messengers work but a single site refuses to load, it's a different story:
- A bank or a government portal. Those want to see your real address: turn on the “RU Apps” preset on the app's main screen, and such services will go around the tunnel and work again. Why this started in April 2026 and what to do with a site in the browser or from abroad — a separate piece.
- The service is region-locked. Switch the connection country: local services want a local location, foreign ones — a foreign one.
- The browser clings to an old session. Refresh the page or open the site in a private window — caches sometimes outlive an address change and confuse the site.
A special case of the same family: light pages open while heavy ones hang and a download stalls after the first kilobytes. Reconnecting does not help, because the link is fine and the packet size is not — the maths and the working numbers are in what MTU to set for WireGuard.
The one-minute checklist
- Does the internet work without Mayak? If not, the network itself is down.
- Check the bottom of Settings: has your access expired?
- Disconnect → Connect.
- Try another country from the list.
- Public Wi-Fi? Sign in to the network first, then turn protection on.
- Want to be sure the traffic really goes through Mayak — open the IP address check twice: without the connection and with it. The address must change; if it stays the same, the traffic is bypassing the tunnel, and that is a different problem.
Still stuck — send us the log: in the app, Settings, at the very bottom — “Send log”. It shows us exactly which step failed, so we don't have to interrogate you. Then drop us a line — we usually reply within a day.