from the team:
Hi everyone,
As you may know, Proton VPN has repeatedly proven effective anti-censorship tools, allowing people to find trustworthy news sources and access obstructed content.
To make Proton VPN’s anti-censorship features even more accessible, we made it possible to log in to the Android app without creating an account. Now you can log in and use the Proton VPN Android app for free without entering any credentials (i.e. you can “continue as guest”):
Together with the constant expansion of our infrastructure (over 6000 servers in close to 100 countries), we believe that this will help our privacy-first VPN service reach those who need it the most more efficiently than ever.
Thank you for your support,
The Proton Team
proton’s having a full on glowup
U think this is sus?
Thank you for your service.
As long as proton ain’t glwoing!
Is that sustainable?
Why wouldn’t out be? Proton has always had a free tier, this just makes it easier for free users to connect to a vpn
Because nothing is free.
Proton’s free plan is supported by people with paid plans
Yes, but the root of the question is whether this is sustainable, or will it get shittified, when “too many” people jumps on the free tier.
Will it get more expensive for the paid tier?
Are they going to get rid of the free tier?
???The free tier servers are finite resources and usually much more busy/ slow. Proton isn’t guaranteeing fast speeds or availability, and all of their free offerings have always been done in a sustainable way.
They’re transitioning to a non-profit organization now. While non-profits have their own problems, and it doesn’t make them exempt from enshittifying, it removes the profit incentive to do so.
In other words: I’d give them a little more credibility when it comes to this sort of thing until they give us a reason not to. I’m hopeful that they can be a positive force in the industries that they are in.
Same. I’m really rooting for them to stick it to the big internet usurpers. And they are doing a stellar job so far.
I’m just really can’t get excited about companies offering free stuff, that costs money to run. Stepped on that rake one too many times.
What they mean is normally when something isn’t being paid for, you are the actual product. It’s why people should never use free password managers, for instance.
Proton may be unique in that the free tier might actually be exactly what it says it is: A product for you. Not a product OF you.
I’m already interested. Anywhere I can get more information that is not on Proton’s website?
@Xanis @DesolateMood
Sure!Tuta.com
Privacyguides.org
EFF.orgAdditionally, Proton Pass and Bitwarden are both well respected, open source, password managers that are Freemium products.
Thank you!
I hesitate to look these things up myself because not only is it a heck of a rabbit hole, sometimes those holes are actually tricksty gophers. So I appreciate it. :)
@Xanis You’re welcome!
Both Proton Pass and Bitwarden are ad-free, secure, and very nearly have the full features of the paid versions.
For most users, the free versions are more than enough.
One limitation is that the free versions don’t allow 2FA TOTPs to be generated. Personally, I’d never use that feature as it removes a barrier to being hacked *IF* the password manager was ever compromised. Instead, the use of a separate Authenticator app for those codes is probably safer!
X, Google, Amazon, you can pay for their services and still be the product. I am not sure if that rule is good in any direction anymore.
Proton has offered free plans for all its products for the last 10 years.
If it wasn’t sustainable, I think we’d have noticed by now.
Well, userbases tend to grow.
If it wasn’t sustainable, I think we’d have noticed by now.
Exactly the opposite.
Yes. Because they’re either making a profit from your meta/data, or it’s a promotion that ends as myriads of “free” services did before it
I pay for it so you can leach off of it. Go ahead. If you feel they did a good job, then consider subscribing.
Yes, but how many people can these contributors support?
7.5 billions. We are good for a few years unless somebody double dips.
Why does it matter?
Is this am honest question, or a drive-by downvote “get fucked” comment?
I mean, why do you care if it’s a sustainable business practice or whatever? Unless you’re a stake holder or something then how much money they’re missing out on shouldn’t even be your concern.
If I’m making an account and potentially moving to a whole new SaaS ecosystem, I might wanna know if what’s going on.
Imagine moving to a new email address, informing every single person about your new email, and then the company goes under. Or starts displaying ads. Etc., etc.
Because they’re either making a profit from your meta/data
They recently changed to a nonprofit, so that’s not it
Proton has been offering free services for 10 years now. And they don’t profit from your data, so your assertion is false.
Nah, i used free tier for a year, realized I liked it and wanted to support them so signed up to the unlimited plan. Their hope is to draw more people in that way, rather than a paywall that turns off potential users
Huge fan of Proton and their services. I use the VPN and two Proton email accounts. Very helpful, easy to use, and the free versions aren’t horrible garbage.
Based
How so? Like Mullvad does it?
How do you use Mullvad without an account?
You use an account but it’s virtually anonymous. You can buy a sort of prepaid card that you activate. You never have to give personal information.
That’s different than what Proton is doing which is to connect you to their free tier without any authentication.
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You basically get a prepaid number that you can use as an identifier for the clients and what you pay for to charge time onto it. Said number is valid for I think 5 devices and can be charged through various ways - you can even send them cash via mail.
This is just “install and use for free without any login of code”. Basically free tier without user.
That’s not free.
Duh? It’s anonymous.
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Sim-cards? What?
It seems to be an alternative to the sign in option, so it doesn’t seem like it.
LET’S GOOOOOOOO
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Does Proton VPN not work in China? I’m trying to use it for the first time on iPhone, both directly and via my already-known-good VPN (Mullvad) but I can’t get the first connection to make an account started either way.
You need to go to settings and under protocol select stealth. The other connection types are blocked in China.
Mullvad doesn’t work here at all.
The most widespread one is Astrill, though it’s quite pricey. Used to be the only one that works consistently; but Proton is a decent alternative.
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Proton Desktop is not linked to your phone in any way, so enabling stealth there doesn’t have any impact on your device unfortunately.
Interesting to hear about Mullvad, maybe they did change the protocol around! My backup had always been Windscribe, they give you 10 GB traffic for free, but the reliability in China went downhill over the last year.
But my days are numbered now anyway, will be out end of July, and still got Astrill prepaid until November or so, so not going to experiment too much now.
Cool cool, everyone is leaving, sigh… thanks for the info!
Cool cool, everyone is leaving, sigh… thanks for the info!
It’s just not fun anymore, covid really killed the vibe. And the fact that they cut tax incentives for foreigners doesn’t help with that.
Cool cool, everyone is leaving, sigh… thanks for the info!
I really love all of the proton products…
Except their VPN. I’m sorry, but their servers trip CAPTCHAs and cloud flare warnings more than 95% of the time for me no matter where I connect from. I really wish it wasn’t like that because it makes the Internet fucking awful to use
Mullvad will just keep getting my 5/month on top of my proton sub, I guess…
Is proton vpn working in china? Im travelling there soon.
Tldr, probably not. Proton has an article saying no, but that article is older than their new Stealth protocol which was built to work better in anti-vpn environments.
I would also read this article which has some information you may find useful.
Been to china, my advice is to amour up with a few vpn providers, and if you can get a sim card from Hong Kong, it gives full coverage in the mainland with western internet access
You guys rock - keep it up and I’ll keep supporting
Another feature yet still no flatpak support
flatpak for something as low level as a VPN is just not a great use case. I say that as a huge proponent of flatpak.
Why
Remember if a service is free then YOU are the product.
Edit: 🤡: no you don’t understand I like this company, so there’s no way they would ever do something underhanded like literally every other company ever 🤡
Proton recently became a non-profit organisation.
This commitment means that they work for the people.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Do you also use the same argument for libre software?
Comparing a completely offline software to a VPN that literally routes all your internet traffic through their own servers is completely apples to oranges.
Fair enough. My only gripe was with that umbrella statement. You are right that with these perpetually online SaaS companies, one must carefully assess their threat models
I’m feeling a bit cynical about this as well, despite their great reputation. Free never really means free in 2024. There’s always a catch…
This is not the case with Proton. Paid subscriptions effectively subsidize free users.
They also subsidise the CEOs salary. And when him, his successor or someone else high up in the company decides that’s not enough for them, that treasure trove of consumer information is going to be awfully tempting to sell if they aren’t already.
And how are they supposed to sell consumer information that’s end-to-end-encrypted?
Are you aware you dont need to understand the actual data to build data on a consumer. Even when its end-to-end encrypted proton still know your IP, the IP you’re trying to access, number of packets (data size) your online times etc.
So while they cant read your facebook messages, they know how often, and at what times you use facebook messenger, netflix, youtube etc. And they can turn that into a profile on you that they can sell.
Even if Proton VPN collects logs (which hasn’t been proven once in its 7 years of operation), it becomes a matter of who you’d rather trust with your browsing habits: Your ISP or Proton.
That is true, as it is true for payed services too. It isn’t in any way impossible that user data of paying customers is sold. You either trust them, or you don’t.
Not even an audit is helping when evil people are evil.
@gmtom @HKayn
Proton’s “paying subscribers” don’t really subsidise the CEO’s pay.
They PAY it! Andy’s and every employee’s salary would be paid for by the subscribers.
Proton AG might receive grants, but probably not enough to keep the servers running nor the lights on in the office.True, as a general rule, “If a product is free, then YOU are the product” but not in Proton’s case.
They’ve had a “Freemium” business model from the start, and there’s no sign of the music slowing.
Proton’s “paying subscribers” don’t really subsidise the CEO’s pay. They PAY it
Yeah thats my point.
If/when the number of paid users drop, what do you think the CEO will do? Take a pay cut himself? Raise prices? fire other employees? Or look for other ways to make money?
Maybe everyone at Proton might have to accept a paycut.
Maybe Proton would have to raise prices in the long term, but offer discounts in the short term to bolster the paid subscriber base.But the ONE thing they can never do, is sell their member’s meta data, let alone their data. It would destroy their business model and the Proton Foundation, now the majority shareholder of Proton AG, is legally bound to never permit such a change.
Remember: You aren’t paying for your lemmy.world account so you’re totally a product!
Yep
