VPN and Kroger, Etsy, etc. websites... Is there a workaround?

[Cliff10]

My wife's business is on Etsy.com only; she sells her wares specifically on that site; it is her "job." The Avast VPN must be turned off to use the Etsy site--on our PC, laptop, AND on her cell. Each time we attempt to login, we get the Error 429 Too Many Requests warning.
I use Kroger stores and their coupons online--in fact, EVERYTHING including fuel points--but the webpage will not function until I have turned off the VPN. That seems illogical and, of course, dangerous--especially for my wife's business. I have gone through the forums and see nothing about this. What am I missing? Does Avast simply expect us to turn off the VPN each time we need to use the websites? That would mean SEVERAL times a day!! Is there a way of bypassing the Error 429 Too Many Requests so that I can use the VPN while visiting those sites???
If there is no way to work around this issue, I suppose I can live with it but please let me know for certain. My hope is that someone reading this will respond with the appropriate way Avast expects me to be able to utilize their VPN and visit/work on these sites without being blocked completely.
Thank you in advance for your help!!
(BTW: If any of you have contacted the Avast Tech Support for this issue, PLEASE let me know if you were helped in any way!)

[mchain]

Hello Cliff10 and welcome to Avast forums.

I've taken the liberty of checking out Kroger's digital coupon website(s) and like you, the Google link connects to Kroger, but never completes when VPN is on.

This could be a setting put in place by Kroger IT staff to block bad actors from visiting their sites under the invisible and secure cloak of VPN tunneling.  VPN's can be used for nefarious purposes as well as for privacy reasons as both hide the true location of the visitor and also encrypt communications between you and the website you are visiting.

An example of this is this site:  https://www.virustotal.com.  If you click that you will get a 403 Forbidden error.  Deactivate your VPN and you will be able to access the site normally.  Since Virus Total shares all known and unknown malware submitted to their site with the security community, it would make sense that malware writers would visit them as well to see if any of the 76 antivirus programs can detect their newest malware.

Another one is a IP protocol site used to locate the physical location of an IP address; visiting this will result in a block requiring you to click a box to prove you are a human (twice) to proceed to the site.  https://www.ip-tracker.org/

Avast is providing the expected secure privacy but whether or not access is allowed for visiting is up to the website in question.