Hello Privacy Guides!
It’s been a while since the launch of Obscura, and we’ve been blown away by the enthusiasm of our users. 
Currently, we’re looking into ways to reward our loyal users!
Our initial thought is that we want them to be able to hand out vouchers for their friends to have a free week or so of Obscura.
We’re wondering if folks have seen referral programs that are well-implemented in-the-wild or have thoughts on what a privacy-friendly referral program would look like?
Proton has Mail and Pass referrals:
Maybe set up a designated URL, like this: example.com/1week4free
with the offer (add it as a separate product), and just delete the page when the campaign is over.
Just remember to exclude the site from web-crawlers unless you want it listed on search engines.
This is a dangerous game, I wouldn’t recommend it to be honest. I suppose there is no danger in a system where only the recipient benefits (i.e. the new user gets an extended free trial or something), but if you are incentivizing your own users then you are going to artificially skew user reviews, no way around it.
In addition to Proton, ente has this. But ente referal program isn’t that private. I don’t mind because because it’s a photo service, but for a VPN service that’s different, a social graph can be dangerous.
The most private way to do it would be that you generate a new referal code daily for all users, so one unique code every 24 hours. Of course there might be some abuse, but this way you aren’t tracking users.
The question is why you would want to implement referals in the first place ?
100% agree, we’d like to avoid accidentally creating a social graph if we can, even if Obscura account information is not tied to any traffic by our design.
I think this may be possible with Blind signatures, but we’re still evaluating that.
Mostly to reward our loyal users and help spread the word. We understand that the design of the system should be thought through carefully, which is why we’re asking for folks’ opinions here!
Further dangers of merely having an affiliate program lol: