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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
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.
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?
@gmtom
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.
https://proton.me/blog/proton-non-profit-foundation
Remember: You aren't paying for your lemmy.world account so you're totally a product!
Yep