Jump to content
Not connected, Your IP: 44.200.179.138

Recommended Posts

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?

 

578608Capture.png

 

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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. 

Share this post


Link to post

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.


During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. —George Orwell

The further society drifts from truth the more it hates those who speak it. —George Orwell

A lie is as good as the truth when everyone believes.

No one ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the amerikan public. {Generally attributed to H.L. Mencken}

THANK YOU: Russia Today; Edward Snowden; Julian Assange; John Kiriakou; Thomas Drake; William Binney; Ray McGovern; Kirk Wiebe; Matt Taibbi; Sputnik News

Share this post


Link to post

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

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.


Occasional moderator, sometimes BOFH. Opinions are my own, except when my wife disagrees.

Share this post


Link to post

33vdkqo.png

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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

Share this post


Link to post

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


During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. —George Orwell

The further society drifts from truth the more it hates those who speak it. —George Orwell

A lie is as good as the truth when everyone believes.

No one ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the amerikan public. {Generally attributed to H.L. Mencken}

THANK YOU: Russia Today; Edward Snowden; Julian Assange; John Kiriakou; Thomas Drake; William Binney; Ray McGovern; Kirk Wiebe; Matt Taibbi; Sputnik News

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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.


Occasional moderator, sometimes BOFH. Opinions are my own, except when my wife disagrees.

Share this post


Link to post

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 "

Share this post


Link to post

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 

 

JYAVWj7.gif

 

 

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.


Occasional moderator, sometimes BOFH. Opinions are my own, except when my wife disagrees.

Share this post


Link to post

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. 

Share this post


Link to post

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)

Share this post


Link to post

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"

Share this post


Link to post

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.

Share this post


Link to post

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  

Share this post


Link to post

 

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. 

Share this post


Link to post

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?

Share this post


Link to post

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.


Occasional moderator, sometimes BOFH. Opinions are my own, except when my wife disagrees.

Share this post


Link to post

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

Share this post


Link to post

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

Share this post


Link to post

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?

Share this post


Link to post

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Security Check
    Play CAPTCHA Audio
    Refresh Image

×
×
  • Create New...