I’ve had it up to here with Proton.

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.)

Another issue I’ve had with Proton is that occasionally I will receive popups on their web site that entirely obstruct the screen and have no way to bypass them. Here’s an example of one advertising Proton Pass, that has no x button and nothing to click except “Start using Proton Pass now,” which is not something I want to do!

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 on your web site? (See: https://i.postimg.cc/FsvxM5CH/proton-Copy.png)

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.

Edit: PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME ABOUT EMAIL PREFERENCES

  • Prototype9215@mastodon.social
    4·
    11 months ago

    @LunchEnjoyer @LinkOpensChest_wav I am also so frustrated with their lack of Linux support! I just set up wireguard on my machine instead of using their Linux ui. Even their cli freezes and fails to log me in. Then the support chat just says “sorry, we don’t officially support your flavor of Linux”

    • 🔗 David Sommerseth@infosec.exchange
      9·
      11 months ago

      @Prototype9215 @LunchEnjoyer @LinkOpensChest_wav

      That’s what really happens when @protonmail insists on doing everything on their own, not even doing the continuous development in the open. They provide source code updates only on stable releases, and even that can be delayed some days until after the release.

      That’s not how you build a community of users, developers and package maintainers.

      Had they instead spent resources getting their Linux packages into the native package streams for the most important distros, they would have solved more bugs earlier with help from the community.

      That is probably the most disappointing aspect of Proton. They still don’t grasp how to interact with a broader community, to get real help.

      They would still need to review contributions, just as I expect they do with changes from their own employees. So it wouldn’t reduce the security.

      Also, they can’t really hide behind the code not being ready to be published; they code is being published in the end.

      But they really miss the opportunity to get their packages into the standard Lunux repositories. Which would help resolving all the incompatibility issues they now have with certain Linux distributions.

      On top of that, all the needed tooling required already exists. It just need to implemented correctly in their processes.

      • Amju Wolf@pawb.socialEnglish
        2·
        11 months ago

        Had they instead spent resources getting their Linux packages into the native package streams for the most important distros, they would have solved more bugs earlier with help from the community.

        Or, you know, even just had official Flatpaks or something. I don’t particularly like them but it’s still way better than releasing only lonely RPMs without even a repo.

        • 🔗 David Sommerseth@infosec.exchange
          2·
          11 months ago

          @amju_wolf

          They could even have a Fedora Copr repo, where they push out the updated .spec file and get a proper package build for all Fedora, RHEL/CentOS and more distros. With proper RPM packaging and repository. Push a new build and all users gets an updated package at their next update cycle.

          That’s a reasonable path to get started with preparing packages to become part of the native yum/dnf repos at least. And that across a lot of distributions and releases in a single go.