I’m an Unlimited subscriber, but even so I receive promotional ads in the Proton VPN app for Android (e.g., “Limited time offer…” or “x% off…”), which is something I find distracting and weird, since my subscription is active. These promotions don’t always appear in the app, but it was really bad around the turn of the new year. It made me feel like I was using some sketchy crapware I accidentally downloaded from the Play store vs. a legitimate VPN app.
Let me make this clear: I am not talking about emails! I know how to manage emails, but for some weird reason, it’s all anyone ever responds with. If one more person replies with information on how to manage email subscriptions, so help me…
I am specifically talking about promotions that appear to be baked into the app itself and are indismissable and perpetually visible within the app. (See my examples above, if you’re still confused by what I mean. I wish I’d taken screenshots last time it happened.)
If you check my comment history, you can see multiple instances of my asking the Proton fediverse account (I think they’re on Mastodon) about these things, and every time without fail, they reply telling me how to manage email subscriptions, which (to be clear) IS NOT AT ALL WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT, IN FACT I WAS VERY EXPLICIT ABOUT THIS.
So I finally contacted them via support. Here’s what I said:
How can I disable notifications for promotions in the Proton VPN app for Android?
I’m not talking about emails, but about the “50% off now!!!” or “Try our new product!!!” style advertisements that I keep seeing.
I am a subscriber to Unlimited, and I do not want to see these self-promoting ads from Proton.
Let me just quote this one more time. I said:
I’m not talking about emails
So here’s the response I got:
I … I can’t fucking believe it.
I’ve sent one last message about this, but I don’t feel very hopeful at this point. If they replied with something like, “Unfortunately, we don’t allow users to dismiss promotions,” I could probably live with that … but this total dodging and ignoring simple questions is a huge red flag. Do I trust these people with my privacy when they can’t even answer a simple question?
Fortunately, all of these services have viable alternatives, so if they are unable to answer me this time, then farewell to Proton. I’m sick of this shit.
I feel seen! It’s weird that some people don’t seem to have gotten the ads. Maybe it was just people in certain countries? (I’m in the US)
I’ve already been using Bitwarden, and I love it so much. I honestly pay for it just to support it.
The main things are the VPN itself and Drive for cloud storage. I too have thought about IVPN or Mullvad, but neither seem quite as good as Proton. Mozilla also has a VPN service, but I never see it mentioned.
And I’m way too non-techy to think of self hosting or anything like that.
I dotn know much about Mozilla VPN, but I believe I heard its a white label of Mullvad, so I assume thir feature set to be similar.
As someone who is deep into the world of VPNs (writing my masters about this), I personally would only recommend the aforementioned ones.
For cloud storage I used to use MEGA and really enjoyed their services, but also not 100% open source i think. Otherwise you could check out Filen.io, or Ente.io(for pictures only).
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !protonprivacy@lemmy.world
Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with
Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.
Proton Mail is the world’s largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.
Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.
Proton Calendar is the world’s first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.
Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It’s open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.
Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.
SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.
I feel seen! It’s weird that some people don’t seem to have gotten the ads. Maybe it was just people in certain countries? (I’m in the US)
I’ve already been using Bitwarden, and I love it so much. I honestly pay for it just to support it.
The main things are the VPN itself and Drive for cloud storage. I too have thought about IVPN or Mullvad, but neither seem quite as good as Proton. Mozilla also has a VPN service, but I never see it mentioned.
And I’m way too non-techy to think of self hosting or anything like that.
I dotn know much about Mozilla VPN, but I believe I heard its a white label of Mullvad, so I assume thir feature set to be similar.
As someone who is deep into the world of VPNs (writing my masters about this), I personally would only recommend the aforementioned ones.
For cloud storage I used to use MEGA and really enjoyed their services, but also not 100% open source i think. Otherwise you could check out Filen.io, or Ente.io(for pictures only).
I guess I’m alright with using Mega. I’d prefer open source of course, but I mostly just don’t want to use something from Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
Jup, same boat here