The journalist nodded, opened his laptop, and stopped panicking.

Her editor needed the final draft of the investigative piece in two hours. Without a VPN, the hotel’s network in the authoritarian state she was flying to would be a trap.

The fastest way to find your ExpressVPN activation code is to remember you don't need a magic string—you need your email and password. The code lives inside your account dashboard, waiting for you to stop looking for shortcuts.

Within seconds, the laptop app refreshed. The code auto-filled.