What is “Secure Core servers”? As opposed to what type of servers?
As per the website:
Free
Paid
Otherwise, yes. It just uses a more restricted number of servers available, and cap your net speed.
How much of a concern is this? Do other VPNs have similar defenses against this network monitoring?
If an attacker can get control of the VPN server, or monitor the network of the server, they will be able to match VPN clients with their traffic, nullifying the privacy benefits of the VPN.
Such timing/correlation attacks are not difficult to accomplish. In countries with restrictive Internet regulations (China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, etc), or countries with broad surveillance powers (USA, UK, etc), state surveillance agencies typically have the legal ability to coerce either the VPN provider, or the network/server provider of the VPN provider, to assist with such network monitoring. Therefore, even though Proton VPN is based in Switzerland, we cannot be certain that authorities are not monitoring our VPN servers located in those high-risk countries.
The biggest difference isn’t the secure core feature. Although this may help in some ways. What actually is way more important is the ability to filter dns requests. The paid version allows to block ads, malware and trackers this way. Also they have announced to add more customization to this the coming year.
Don’t expect a cow to fly, a VPN is not the right tool if you need to hide from your government.
As the previous poster mentioned, they are ok for privacy if all you are hiding from is surveillance capitalism or your IPS.
Old thread but for anyone reading this I wouldn’t use either. Your constantly having to turn it off as most places block the IP’s proton uses. You run into issues if using any .gov site, want to do online banking securely, or even buy anything online. Completely defeats the purpose of the VPN. Then there are issues of the VPN getting close to 100% and it just stops working. If you try quick connect it will take you right back to the same node. Was a complete waste of money.
Sorry to say this, but using VPN for accessing government website or banking already defeats the purpose of VPN. You already log with your own identity, what do you expect from VPN?
You can still try Stealth protocol and alternative routing which work for me in most cases.
Edit: Typos.
It’s just annoying when you have to constantly turn it off and on to do anything online.
I only have to disable my (Proton) VPN when accessing streaming services or editing Wikipedia. All the other sites I use don’t have a problem with it.
VPNs don’t help with that anyways. Your bank should support HTTPS. That is the important part for secure website access. A lot of dishonest VPN marketing has created misunderstanding about their benefits. From a security standpoint, they only add a limited amount of protection against malicious wifi/ISPs. Which is not a common problem to encounter.