Protonmail launches ProtonVPN

There's a free plan.
protonvpn.com

It uses openVPN so it can run on almost any device.

I think there are no referrals but if here are please tell me :smiling_imp:

Link to the announcement https://protonmail.com/blog/protonvpn-launched-free-vpn/

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Where are the servers located? As in.. where do you pop out at?

I remember reading on their site they operate servers out of Sweden, but that may have only applied to the ProtonMail servers.

you can choose between 14 countries, I think some are free and some are exclusive for the paid users

Very good, will probly go with them once my yearly expires over at airvpn. And if airvpn holds true to past form, they will cut me off at least a month early. Seriously, fuck that company.

Free VPN ? Hmm... Not a good idea.

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I agree that nothing's ever free.
Maybe it's free to encourage to buy the paid tier.
Care to elaborate on why it's a bad idea?
I'm not taking sides, I'm curious.

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speaking of openVPN, this article says bugs were found (can't comment on it , haven't read it yet, in on my way to school rn)

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When something is free, you are most likely the product.

That being said I do have an upgraded version of protonmail and can use their vpn... if its any good I might just use that instead of PIA

PIA has been audited and found to not keep logs.

free VPN could be ad supported which can in some forms expose your true location through ipv6 or other means. Some free VPN providers will want you to promote the product through social media, some impose data caps on the service. The purpose of VPN is to have security and anonymity, When the service is free and you are the product you lose some of the purpose of the product.

Thanks for the article

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It's good that bugs where found. And thus openvpn has been able to patch these.

I'd be more concerned if bugs weren't found after an audit.

https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/VulnerabilitiesFixedInOpenVPN243

If anyone has a server running openvpn make sure to not rely on the distro packages for updates as these can often take far too long.

https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/OpenvpnSoftwareRepos

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ProtonMail servers are in Switzerland.

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I setup ProtonVPN over the weekend using pfSense 2.3 and OpenVPN. The hardware is a fanless Intel i5 w/ AES-NI enabled and Intel NICs.

My connection was on the "Basic" ($5/mo) service. They also have a faster service available for twice the cost ($10/mo).

My ISP link is 200Mbps down and ProtonVPN was never able to get above 50Mbps.

The faster service requires that you connect to 1 of only 2 servers in the USA.....they do not tell you the physical location of the servers. Yes, you can connect and figure it out from the IP address but I don't know why I should have to?

Anyhow, the 2 servers that are configured for the higher speed were both above 25% network utilization according to the provided server list.

I am getting 3 times the download speed on another VPN (+/- 150Mbps) so I requested a cancelation and refund from support. So far I have not received a response.

Just sharing my experience in case it helps anybody?

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Not liking the random service drops.........

haha I guess they're too popular for their own good

I like Proton. I use ProtonMail. But I'm gonna wait until 2018 to see if they'll upgrade their servers, since even the paying customers seem to be having issues. If they do I'll gladly pay 94 euros per year for VPN.

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I found a CLI implementation of ProtonVPN on GitHub. It works really well for me and negates the downloading of configuration files and keys. All you do is install the .sh and sign in. This allows you to choose the server you want to connect to, select a random server from wherever or the fastest server from you.

Why this over natively supported ovpn cofnigs?

@Eden

That’s a good question, actually. It just starts an openvpn daemon in the background. I suppose if there are any changes to the config file, it would be updated upon each connection, but that brings up another question: is it caching the configs on each connection or renewing them?

The thing is pretty bare bones, but I like the option to connect to a random server or the fastest server. However, to connect to a specific server, it seems you can’t use the IP address and you have to know the “name” of the server in advance. That kind of connection would look like this.

sudo protonvpn-cli -c us-va#101 udp

It could also be that if a server provider shuts down you don’t have to reconfigure. Example on April 27th they mentioned that their provider in Spain shutdown with no notice so all of those configs stopped working.