Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi
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I removed your Proton extension from my browser, but now there's big "VPN" button on my toolbar. Every time I press this button, the extension reinstalls and automatically activates itself (with enabled permissions to read any of my data) again. I don't need to do anything else for that.
I can remove the button from the toolbar, it's very easy. But now I know that inside of my browser constantly sits the code for one-click installation of unwanted 3rd-party software, for which I did not give my permission for.
You lost my trust. Hope it was worth it.
Cool slogan on main page, by the way.
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I have been working on a list of businesses outside Us Jurisdiction. On that list is a whole list of VPN providers, outside Us Jurisdiction, which Vivaldi could have easily picked from.
https://codeberg.org/Linux-Is-Best/Outside_Us_Jurisdiction/src/branch/main/VPN.md
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@NetscapeNavigator From a legal standpoint, the terms for Proton Wallet are irrelevant for you when you are using an entirely different product. And in this case the product is actually provided by a different company (owned by Proton, but the distinction matters). And the terms of service themselves are largely irrelevant when it comes to the jurisdiction a service is subject to, the US (and the EU for that matter) will try to get them to follow local laws regardless of what's in their terms and where they are located. I'm not a lawyer, but I think the essential part here is that since Proton is not a US company, there are rather few things the US can do if Proton chooses not to follow the laws there.
Protons main terms actually explicitly mention the jurisdiction and such too
https://proton.me/legal/terms -
As this VPN is an extension, I presume that the mobile version of Vivaldi won't be getting this in the near future, as it doesn't support extensions?
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Not thrilled with the choice of Proton, but I can appreciate this move on a conceptual level at least.
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@16patsle That is now how our laws, work.
You do not get to pick and choose, which division of Proton falls under Us Jurisdiction. Part of your terms cite and are subject to Us Law, which means the whole of Proton can certainly be impacted and influenced by Us Jurisdiction.
That said, I would much rather let their own legal documentation speak for itself. Here are their terms concerning Proton. It has whole sections concerning US Customers and US Laws. https://proton.me/wallet/terms A company outside Us Law would not care about American laws, anymore than you would likely care about the law in North Korea, for example.
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@NetscapeNavigator In their main terms, which are the only ones that apply when you use the VPN, they explicitly say (shortened version)
If you are a business user (anywhere in the world) or a consumer user (residing outside of the United States of America), you agree that these Terms shall be governed in all respects by the substantive laws of Switzerland, to the maximum extent permitted by law. [...]
If you are a consumer user residing in the United States of America, you consent to the extent permitted by law to the jurisdiction of the courts of the Canton of Geneva to settle any dispute or claim [...] relating in any way to these Terms or its subject matter or formation agree that any such claim that is brought in Switzerland shall be governed in all respects by the substantive laws of Switzerland
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Other than that, they are governed by the laws of Switzerland as that is where they are based, and to some degree they may be impacted by the laws of where you the user is based, regardless of what's in the terms. It's quite likely other VPNs that don't mention US laws in their terms could still be covered by US jurisdiction in some instances, if you as the user is US based.
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@funtaril I'll pass on the feedback, I'm not entirely sold on the one click install either. But do know that it will not install without you clicking that button, so if you hide it and remove the extension you won't suddenly find it installed again
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@Levrini The 3635 nightly version number was reserved a couple of weeks ago in preparation for this release. When we changed from 7.2 to 7.3 for the stabilization branch we also change the nightly number to 3635 to keep the numbering a bit less complicated. It does not mean that everything before 3635 was included.
Normally if we would bump the major.minor version number we would have reserved original+1 one; that was not practical this time, so we picked one that was not being used in builds yet, and skipped the normal builds past that one.
See https://vivaldi.com/blog/where-does-vivaldi-browser-get-its-version-number-from/ for more.
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@NetscapeNavigator, Vivaldi has a Headquarter in the US, but because of this it isn't a US company, Mozilla and Microsoft have Headquartes in Germany and because of this are certainly not German companies, and other infinite examples. It's normal that companies have headquarters in all countries where they have users.
Proton is a Swiss company, founded by CERN scientists and certainly has headquarters all over the world, because they have users all over the world, not only in the US.>Laptop ACER, AMD Ryzen, GPU AMD Radeon RAM 16GB, SSD 512GB -Win11 Home 64 v24H2| Vivaldi last stable|
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@16patsle Corporations would love you to believe that terms of services, were islands onto themselves and laws of themselves, but they are not.
Proton's own terms of services quote US Laws throughout their terms of services, because they directly apply to you and them, regardless, because Proton is a registered business in the United States.
That is why, they quote Us Laws and Us Jurisdiction, because while they would prefer you to defer to the laws of Switzerland, they cannot escape their reality.
That said, you will note, there are no cited laws for, Germany, for example. Or Japan, for example. Or any other country, because Proton, is only concerned about the laws that apply to them, and rightfully so.
Dear Reader, count how many times YOU can find "United States" in their own terms https://proton.me/wallet/terms
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@Catweazle said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:
Vivaldi has a Headquarter in the US
This would be sad to learn, because it would make Vivaldi subject to Us Law.
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Proton VPN is great and nice.
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"If you are a business user (anywhere in the world) or a consumer user (residing outside of the United States of America), you agree that these Terms shall be governed in all respects by the substantive laws of Switzerland"
Proton is a swiss company for what I understand. I leave the rest of the debate as I'm not even interested in using a VPN by now. -
@NetscapeNavigator As I've said those terms are really not relevant to the VPN product, they concern an entirely different product provided by a different company (subsidiary). And the jurisdiction is not dictated by the terms anyways. If the terms say they may give all your data to the US government then that doesn't automatically mean they are under US jurisdiction and legally required to follow US law.
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@16patsle As I said, that is not how our laws work. You do not get to pick and choose which office is subject to the law, anymore than anyone gets to pick which laws to follow.
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@NetscapeNavigator Interpretation of Legal terms is not easy. Are you a lawyer working in IT laws? The you can tell us more.
Risk with the VPN extension could be:
- they handle your vivaldi mail address to US Intelligence and Friends
- they are able to install a secret backdoor on their VPN servers to give local authorities & Friends access network traffic
Or what is your real concern?
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@NetscapeNavigator Vivaldi has an office (not HQ) in the US, presumably operated by a US subsidiary of Vivaldi Technologies AS. That does not mean the parent company or any of it's products are necessarily under US jurisdiction, but that again could depend on where you as a user is located and what specific laws are in question
