Proton @lemmy.world Nelizea @lemmy.world 4 mo. ago

Proton VPN now available without creating an account (Android)

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

78 comments

proton's having a full on glowup
- U think this is sus?
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 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.
  
  Proton has been offering free services for 10 years now. And they don't profit from your data, so your assertion is false.
  
  Because they're either making a profit from your meta/data
  
  They recently changed to a nonprofit, so that's not it
  
  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
Based
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.
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.
  
  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.
- It seems to be an alternative to the sign in option, so it doesn't seem like it.
LET'S GOOOOOOOO
Permanently Deleted
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.
  
  Hmm, thank you for the info! I can’t get to settings though as I can’t get past the account setup stage, I’ll try to sign up on desktop.
  
  For your trivia, Mullvad works great for me in China, better than Astrill these days. I use and test multiple just to know and have backups.
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.
- 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.
- Remember: You aren't paying for your lemmy.world account so you're totally a product!
  
  Yep

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