Privacy and security wise (not speed and such perks), what exactly is the downside of using free Proton VPN vs paid?
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Short answer? Nothing. You get limited locations and speeds and of course, other benefits are missing. It’s clearly explained on their website too.
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Ahh, the amount of pitch fork crowd against free VPN makes one feel like all all and every free VPN are evil.
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There might actually be benefit on using proton free vs prem. Proton free doesn’t need an account so less trackable PII that could be traced back to users. And since free plan have only a handfull of servers to choose from, logically theres more users connected to the same server and sharing the same ip, basically 1 users are more hidden amongs them all.
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The free plan doesn’t have Proton’s secure core feature that can help protect against certain attacks described here.
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I think it stems from the same idea as “free” platforms like Facebook, etc. If you aren’t paying for it, then you’re the product. So free VPN services aren’t evil, per se, but they could be selling your data to advertisers instead of charging for the service. I’m a bit skeptical of most VPN services in general, anyway. A lot of the features that they sell can be accomplished through other means, like Tor, Signal, etc.
For instance, with a VPN provider like ProtonVPN or NordVPN, you are putting all of your trust in that provider to keep your data safe. Essentially, they become your ISP. With Tor, that trust is “distributed” among the different Tor relays, and if you find one untrustworthy, you can always change your Tor circuit or identity.
This argument does not apply to Proton and is an exception the the generally accepted rule.
Ok, that’s reassuring! Perhaps I need to familiarize myself with Proton’s service a bit more.
Yes, please do. They are recommended by PG for a reason.
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Any other provide?
What? I don’t follow.
Any other free VPN provider like Proton (that’s as good)?
Not that I know of. I believe Proton is the only exception.
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“FREE” “VPN” services involves two elements.
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Any commercial services whithout a clear, sustainable business model is a big red flag.
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Any VPN that fail to provide decent privacy policy and being audited is another red flag.
In this case, while Proton offers free tier VPN, they have a clear and sustainable business model, and they have decent track record and privacy policy, so no concerns here.
Menwhile free VPN that has payed version too just benefits from the free users as more trafic is harder to snoop.
They don´t, Proton has dedicated free servers for only free users, paid users have faster servers with no free users.
When you say harder to snoop, what do you mean exactly?
VPN traffic cannot be snooped upon. It’s encrypted. At best, only traffic analysis could be done with how much bandwidth is being consumed.
So what do you mean by what you said?
That is a bit sad
Traffic analysis was my thinking. The more traffic from the more source the harder to get any results. But meanwhile it turned out they use dedicated servers for free users so it is not a factor.
Windscribe has a pretty good free plan