ProtonVPN (from Protonmail)

[victorab 12]

Hi,

Did you heard about ProtonVPN www.protonvpn.com ? Created by the Protonmail team it's a no log VPN. 

If you are a Protonmail visionnary user, you can test it for free (BETA version). If you've have aldready tested it, what do you think?

 

 

I have an account for it but I don't really know what to think. But it's a very early Beta so maybe more options will be added to it. The only feature not available in AirVPN is the secureCore (kinda the micro-routing system but for security and available in a lot of server without restriction) They did not have a very documented FAQ atm but I think it's a VPN (only really safe countries)-> Proxy. This allow people to have an exit IP in countries where servers may be raided or so on, without leaking users informations.

 

CUT BY STAFF. NO ADS HERE.

[greenclaydog 6]

I'm not sure if it will be anything to compete with AirVPN, but being a ProtonMail user, i am excited by what this could potentially become.

 

More details will be needed before any conclusions on their service can be made.

 

@zhang888 might be able to help with that. 

[Ricnvolved1956 51]

Agent Smith-- Fellow Protonmail customer here, and this news does sound interesting. Don't think I'll be trying their VPN anytime soon since a Visionary account is a little rich for my blood.

[victorab 12]

ProtonVPN will be free

It will be available for free and financially supported by ProtonMail, with a code licensed under MIT. "It may sound surprising, but monetization is not really a concern at the moment. Our idea is that if ProtonVPN brings value to the ProntonMail community, funds for support will become available in one way or another. 

EDIT: I have contradictory informations about the price of ProtonVPN https://twitter.com/ProtonVPN/status/834714083085656064

[greenclaydog 6]

ProtonVPN will be free

It will be available for free and financially supported by ProtonMail, with a code licensed under MIT. "It may sound surprising, but monetization is not really a concern at the moment. Our idea is that if ProtonVPN brings value to the ProntonMail community, funds for support will become available in one way or another.

That's quite a risky business plan. Hope it pays off somehow. I have no idea how much revenue ProtonMail makes, but I would have a difficult time imagining the financial burden of both projects can rest solely on ProtonMail.

[zhang888 1066]

Email is cheaper to run than a VPN service so that might be financially possible.

There are much less expenses per user for a mail provider rather than a VPN provider for the same 5$/month.

 

However, the amount of abuse and support tickets they will be dealing with will quickly make them reconsider this model.

[victorab 12]

It seems that they own their own servers in Iceland. They are fully whitelisted from every websites (for the moment) and It may be in this location where they store private users informations, being part of the "privacy" goal.

 

EDIT: They also own their servers in Sweden. SecureCore is relying on these two locations, so we now know what is really the Secure Core system.

[nickname 0]

well, they have already a "Aktiengesellschaft" (AG), basically you need 50.000€ for that corporation type, so I think they have no problems to pay their servers

[Ricnvolved1956 51]

victorab-- The VPN may be free for Visionary account customers to try, but the subscription fee at that level is 24 Euros a month.

[Khariz 109]

yeah, I really want to try it out, but I'm not going to sign up for a visionary membership just to do that.  I guess I'll wait until it goes commercial, or is included with lesser subs.

[rarez 0]

This looks interesting.

[zhang888 1066]

I still do expect a monthly subscription for premium usage when, and if, they launch it.

Somebody mentioned a €50,000 amount earlier, this is about the amount it costs to run a fully featured VPN service (per month),

considering ~200 servers connected to 1Gbit lines. This still does not include support staff, maintenance and other employees such

as sales, legal, social media, etc. This is also before taxes and does not cover ROI plans, just the expenses.

 

So if some provider offers you a free VPN, you should know that you are the product, just like in the old business clichée.

[victorab 12]

I still do expect a monthly subscription for premium usage when, and if, they launch it.

Somebody mentioned a €50,000 amount earlier, this is about the amount it costs to run a fully featured VPN service (per month),

considering ~200 servers connected to 1Gbit lines. This still does not include support staff, maintenance and other employees such

as sales, legal, social media, etc. This is also before taxes and does not cover ROI plans, just the expenses.

 

So if some provider offers you a free VPN, you should know that you are the product, just like in the old business clichée.

 

The full quote is:

"It may sound surprising, but monetization is not really a concern at the moment. Our idea is that if ProtonVPN brings value to the ProntonMail community, the funds to support it will become available in one way or another, whether through participatory financing, donations or even premium paid premiums "

[zhang888 1066]

Totally supporting the "one way or another" business model. Hope to see it live soon.

At least then some benchmarks can be done.

 

Now we see that running an email service and charging $5 per month is a great business 

 

 

 

Disclaimer:

I am an early supporter of Protonmail and endorsed their service multiple times.

This is not an attempt to make them look odd. But A service provider has to stick

to its mission, expanding to new "adventures" is what made businesses fail in the past.

[greenclaydog 6]

As i seem to recall, the service is ONLY free for Visionary members.

 

Outside users, or Plus or free accounts on ProtonMail must still pay a subscription fee to use ProtonVPN.

 

I would anticipate that cost to be anywhere between AirVPN's $7 per month to perhaps $15 a month or somewhere in those whereabouts.

 

For users who wish to use both ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, it may be more cost effective to get a Visionary subscription to ProtonMail where ProtonVPN is included. 

[victorab 12]

As i seem to recall, the service is ONLY free for Visionary members.

 

Outside users, or Plus or free accounts on ProtonMail must still pay a subscription fee to use ProtonVPN.

 

I would anticipate that cost to be anywhere between AirVPN's $7 per month to perhaps $15 a month or somewhere in those whereabouts.

 

For users who wish to use both ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, it may be more cost effective to get a Visionary subscription to ProtonMail where ProtonVPN is included. 

I don't think so. At this time a visionary account is mandatory if you want to use ProtonVPN to have access to the closed BETA (free of charge). But as the quote said, they don't plan to have a paid service but more a Freemium one (it's too early for them to decide how they will earn money tho. Maybe crowdfunding, donations, premium options etc ).

I've tweeted them about what @zhang888 said for the abuse and support tickets if they will be free. And they replied "We're experts in dealing with abuse and support tickets, so a lot of expertise from ProtonMail will carry over." not gainsaying the price.

Also the quote 

It may sound surprising, but monetization is not really a concern at the moment. Our idea is that if ProtonVPN brings value to the ProntonMail community, the funds to support it will become available in one way or another, whether through crowfunding, donations or even premium services "

is from them directly (https://www.nextinpact.com/news/103399-protonmail-nous-parle-beta-fermee-son-protonvpn.htm french interview)

[Keksjdjdke 35]

Here are the specs of the encryption and RSA key size that the ProtonVpn uses.

 

Cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, 2048 bit RSA

Outgoing Control Channel Authentication Using 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication

incoming Control Channel Authentication 512 bit message hash 'SHA512' for HMAC authentication

Data Channel Encrypt: Cipher 'AES-256-GCM' initialized with 256 bit key

​Im not sure if they use forward Secrecy or not.

​Source "log from tunnelblick when connecting it the VPN"

[greenclaydog 6]

So, i recently tried the service for myself a few minutes ago. 

 

Pretty disappointed so far. 

 

The servers themselves are high quality and offer awesome speeds, however their client as of right now is garbage. 

 

As a matter of fact, i could not even connect on my PC because once i did, all DNS requests failed. Bummer.

 

After some time i got it to work via OpenVPN on my Android, and all was working.

 

My biggest complaint with it right now other than the client not working properly out of the box is the fact that they are doing the standard TCP 443 and UDP 1194 approach. Most institutions with half of a brain block and filter these in a heartbeat. Obfuscation is a absolute MUST for me, and it must be available on all platforms, which is something AirVPN already does, so as of right now there is no incentive to switch.

[victorab 12]

I kinda agree.

So, i recently tried the service for myself a few minutes ago. 

 

Pretty disappointed so far. 

 

The servers themselves are high quality and offer awesome speeds, however their client as of right now is garbage. 

 

As a matter of fact, i could not even connect on my PC because once i did, all DNS requests failed. Bummer.

 

After some time i got it to work via OpenVPN on my Android, and all was working.

 

My biggest complaint with it right now other than the client not working properly out of the box is the fact that they are doing the standard TCP 443 and UDP 1194 approach. Most institutions with half of a brain block and filter these in a heartbeat. Obfuscation is a absolute MUST for me, and it must be available on all platforms, which is something AirVPN already does, so as of right now there is no incentive to switch.

I kinda agree

Their client is conflicting with Eddie, you have to reinstall the TAP driver (better uninstall ProtonVPN, then TAP, then reinstall), I've pushed it to them.

But I don't think they'll stuck with these ports simply because as a big mail provider, they'll have lot of clients from Iran, UAE etc.. already using Protonmail so they'll need to change it and probably adding layers of stealth because of that (adding SSL,SSH maybe?)

If they do not take this road, I'll never subscribe to it.

We'll see but with what they said about their competitors (https://protonmail.com/blog/best-vpn-service/) naming them I hope for them that they'll be robusts  

[greenclaydog 6]

 

I kinda agree.

So, i recently tried the service for myself a few minutes ago. 

 

Pretty disappointed so far. 

 

The servers themselves are high quality and offer awesome speeds, however their client as of right now is garbage. 

 

As a matter of fact, i could not even connect on my PC because once i did, all DNS requests failed. Bummer.

 

After some time i got it to work via OpenVPN on my Android, and all was working.

 

My biggest complaint with it right now other than the client not working properly out of the box is the fact that they are doing the standard TCP 443 and UDP 1194 approach. Most institutions with half of a brain block and filter these in a heartbeat. Obfuscation is a absolute MUST for me, and it must be available on all platforms, which is something AirVPN already does, so as of right now there is no incentive to switch.

I kinda agree

Their client is conflicting with Eddie, you have to reinstall the TAP driver (better uninstall ProtonVPN, then TAP, then reinstall), I've pushed it to them.

But I don't think they'll stuck with these ports simply because as a big mail provider, they'll have lot of clients from Iran, UAE etc.. already using Protonmail so they'll need to change it and probably adding layers of stealth because of that (adding SSL,SSH maybe?)

If they do not take this road, I'll never subscribe to it.

We'll see but with what they said about their competitors (https://protonmail.com/blog/best-vpn-service/) naming them I hope for them that they'll be robusts  

 

The level of transparency ProtonMail has given so far with this information is somewhat promising.

 

But if they do not add obfuscation, i cannot subscribe to them as my main provider. While it is commonly used for restrictive countries such as Iran, China etc. They are still very useful for restrictive networks in the US and the UK where corporations, public wifi and others try to lock down users into censorship and surveillance.

 

Fix their client, and add obfuscation such as Obfs4 or SSL/SSH tunnels and i might switch over if it seems promising. And i'll pay too, i don't care if its technically free or not, ill donate and contribute that way instead. 

[mcantu 3]

I was about to sign up for Plus service to get in the VPN beta.  Is it possible for Eddie and the ProtonVPN client to coexist on the same system?

[zhang888 1066]

I was about to sign up for Plus service to get in the VPN beta.  Is it possible for Eddie and the ProtonVPN client to coexist on the same system?

 

As long as they provide .ovpn files (OpenVPN config) without having you to reverse engineer their client, Eddie will support it.

[victorab 12]

I was about to sign up for Plus service to get in the VPN beta.  Is it possible for Eddie and the ProtonVPN client to coexist on the same system?

I think they updated the client. It'll works anyway. if a problem occurs, you just have to delete the TAP driver and let ProtonVPN reinstall it

[Khariz 109]

Yeah, their servers are good, and I hate their client.  I'm logging into to ProtonVPN through Eddie.  Love that feature.

[mcantu 3]

Yeah, their servers are good, and I hate their client.  I'm logging into to ProtonVPN through Eddie.  Love that feature.

 

how do you do that?