Concerns about ProtonVPN servers being down

General
1

So, I recently bought ProtonVPN premium subscription. Before I used their free plan, and everything worked just fine.

I don’t use their apps, I use wg.conf files to manually setup vpns on different devices and tune firewalls to work with them. I explain this, so you can understand, why I just don’t hit “Connect me to the fastest available server” button and forget about this situation.

For some reasons I chose secure core Moldova servers (mainly, my thoughts was like: no one in Moldova would care about data retention) as my default VPN route. I spent some time to set everything working and it was working OK, until it stops, roughly 3 days ago.
I waited, nothing happened. I checked status.proton.me - nothing about this. I checked their servers list, and for the last 3 days it displayed that this server is down, while showing 95-100% load.

I wrote to Proton support and got a reply like “hey, it’s just a regular maintenance, no worries, nothing to look at, customer”.

So my question is for other ProtonVPN users, I guess there are few here. Is it normal situation? Have you noticed something like this before?

If their status page would display at least something like “Dear ProtonVPN users, our servers in Moldova are seriously f***ed up, and we don’t know why, but we are trying our best, no ETA” I will be more calm.

With this “just a regular unannounced maintenance for 3+ days” explanation I feel like servers I used are being raided right now or something other bad is happening.

1 Like
2

A 3 days unannounced downtime doesn’t sound like a “regular” maintenance to me, nor it should be normalize at all. The status page should be exactly for that, to announce prolongue downtime whether planned or not.

1 Like
3

I am not defending proton’s lack of display for taking a server down, but sometimes computers break, and you can’t do anything about it.

I checked the servers here: VPN server list: Secure Proton VPN servers in 110+ countries | Proton VPN. It seems that their secure core server is at 100% load, while the non-secure core ones are free. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a fallback mechanism in place for your WG conf file for a seamless connection? Unless you are actively checking the VPN servers and their load, there is a non-zero chance that the node might be taken down for maintenance or fried due to some outage.

1 Like
4

The problem is not about my setup, I already did necessary changes.

For me it just looks sketchy, server is definitely doing something (it’s not always 100%, sometimes it fluctuates in 95-100% range), and I don’t think that they are upgrading it to Fedora 41 all this time.

If Proton support stuff are just lazy or don’t want to advertise such massive downtimes at their status section (then why make it available at all) - it is unpleasant, but understandable.

But if there’s something more malicious, though I did nothing “wrong” while using these servers, I still feel disappointment, and now I probably won’t use them, even when (or “if”) they will be up again, because it doesn’t feel safe anymore.

But maybe it’s just a somewhat ordinary practice at ProtonVPN, and it happens with all other servers regularly too. As I said, I became paid user just recently, so my question is to more experienced users.

5

@imbo I don’t think it is unusual for servers to be down sometimes unannounced. Mullvad also doesn’t provide this information for all servers that are down as you can see in on their server status page.

I can understand your frustration. It’s quite inconvenient when a server goes down if you are using a wireguard config. Your best bet is to save a few configs to swap between when this happens.

6

I am sorry, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.

For me it just looks sketchy, server is definitely doing something

It could be, or it could also be that since there is no capacity left because everything is down, the usage is perpetually at 100%? Maybe @Proton_Team can answer it?

But if there’s something more malicious, though I did nothing “wrong” while using these servers, I still feel disappointment, and now I probably won’t use them, even when (or “if”) they will be up again, because it doesn’t feel safe anymore.

That, in my humble opinion, would be FUD. Servers get taken down across all VPNs all the time. It’s quite unfortunate that it happened to the one you were using, but if you think that one node of Proton VPN is compromised, nothing stops you from making a claim a step above that and claiming that the Proton VPN is compromised.

7

As I said before, the problem is not my setup.

If you read through this topic, you can see, that I already said, that server usage is always in 95-100% range, and it is changing from time to time, but there is always red exclamation mark, saying that “Server is currently down”.
Plus Proton support answer very clear, that this is an “ordinary maintenance”.

How about still unannounced maintenance that is coming to its fifth day? Does it make sense to you?

I don’t make such claims. And don’t even want to. But this is rented server, over which Proton does not have much authority. I’m just saying that something unusual (at least for me, maybe it is quite usual for ProtonVPN’s secure core servers) is happening and it lacks proper explanation.

I’m not against servers being down. It may be down for a month. They may get rid from all Moldovian servers. But not without explaining why, that’s not what I expect from a trustworthy VPN provider.
Maybe I want too much. But in VPN business trust is paramount, I believe, and lack of transparency in this case is not very reassuring.

Proton have special site section, where they report such things. But I assume that if they write there that this is a regular maintenance for 4+ days, not only me will start questioning such explanation.

2 Likes
8

This is just nitpicking, but the actual Secure Core servers are only in Switzerland, Iceland and Sweden. The Moldova server you chose is only exit server.

From Proton site

“We have also gone to extraordinary lengths to defend our Secure Core servers. First, servers are located in countries selected specifically for their strong privacy laws (Iceland, Switzerland, and Sweden). We also placed our Secure Core servers in high-security data centers to ensure strong physical security . Proton VPN infrastructure in Sweden is housed in an underground data center, while our Iceland servers are on a former military base. Furthermore, Secure Core servers are wholly owned and provisioned by us (shipped on-site directly from our offices). Finally, Secure Core servers are connected to the Internet using our own dedicated network with IP addresses that are owned and operated by our own Local Internet Registry (LIR).”

Edit.

Even if the Moldova server would have been compromised (and I’m not saying it is), your entry server, which is the Secure Core, is OK and your ip from Moldova’s point of view, points to Secure Core server and is not linked to you. Besides the fact that there is no logged data available because ‘no logs’.

Edit 2.

Yes, this didn’t answer your actual question, I just wanted to clarify the Secure Core idea.

9

Thank you, I already knew all that information.

As for my concerns, I checked their status history, and not long ago they had “scheduled maintenance” at Moldavian servers for 3+ months. They have many other working Moldavian servers, why not make one of them new exit for Secure Core - who knows.

But now for me it looks like ordinary negligence, which is sad, but understandable.