Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi

dalinar

this is pretty amazing.. I get over 400mbps on speed test with it.. that's basically as fast as my connection is even without a VPN on

I always wondered why VPN providers couldn't just build an extension for it, rather their extensions are usually just a way to control the OS's VPN software. So this really is great.

Does it use Wireguard?

DoctorG

Switching VPN on and off can sometimes cause Vivaldi Sync to break without any reconnect.
Restart Vivaldi helps.

yngve

@funtaril It will be up to the UI/design team whether to add such a dialog (but even if they do, you won't see it in 7.3 due to translation requirements). Personally, I think it is unnecessary, and as mentioned I think it is going to annoy many users, even if it is a once-only dialog.

There is, however, another, general, aspect of blocking dialogs like this, especially error/warning dialogs (and may, or may not, include dialogs like the information dialog mentioned above). What has been discovered over the past 10-20 years is that they tend to be counterproductive, especially in the security area.

What was discovered was that users would ignore (click through) warnings so that they could continue on with what they were doing, even if that meant doing the security/privacy equivalent of driving off a Mount Everest sized cliff (more colorful expressions exists).

That is the reason why many of the errors and warning dialogs in browsers are now either difficult, or impossible, to bypass.

I am pretty sure this "click it away before reading" tendency extends to informational dialogs, as well. Just think about the GDPR dialog/banners.

dalinar

if someone buys a subscription to Proton VPN will it work through this extension? or do you have to install software on windows as well for that?

RedSnt

@dalinar If it works like NordVPN's extension, then it works just fine in the browser alone. But you can install software if you like on the side and connect that way as well, although it's been over a decade since I needed to do that.

luetage

@Catweazle The article you linked is AI written, I didn’t say it contains wrong information. Although what do I know, I didn’t try to find original sources for anything. You gotta be able to discern between the two anyway.

luetage

@dalinar Yes, it works through the extension alone, but in this case only for connections made through the browser. If you need all your internet traffic to go through Proton you will need to download an extra application.

npro

@electryon said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

Also the extension they ship is a modified one, you can only login with a proton account in the original extension.
Vivaldi is modifying it.

From the little I researched Proton modified it, not Vivaldi, they added some entries in their extension code 2 days ago (about accepting partner mails and whatnot).

Vivaldi would avoid all this discussion and wouldn't give to people arguments for confirmations dialogs etc if they just shipped it as oem.

If they would ship it as oem then people would complain that they integrated in their browser code that is related to their privacy or unnecessary bloat no one asked for, because last time I checked,

This is one of the most requested features Vivaldi ever had and you see what happens.

adding a VPN was never one of the most requested features Vivaldi ever had, or I am completely blind or drunk https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/185/desktop-feature-requests?sort=most_votes&page=1 or you are making things up.

Therefore the best solution would still be to just say after clicking that button that "Hi, starting with this release we offer <blah blah>. If you are interested press continue in order to install the Proton PVN extension needed, "it's open-source and totally checked by us" -and whatever other friendly sauce you want, I think you got the point already-. And adding "you can completely remove it anytime from 'there'", but again, they didn't want user feedback, so it did what it did now.

electryon

@npro said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

From the little I researched Proton modified it, not Vivaldi, they added some entries in their extension code 2 days ago (about accepting partner mails and whatnot).

So it is a partnership after all between Vivaldi and Proton. To the level they code the extension based on this partnership. Because they were people posting nonsense there isn't even a partnership and it's an ad lol.

If they would ship it as oem then people would complain that they integrated in their browser code that is related to their privacy or unnecessary bloat no one asked for, because last time I checked,

They would complain anyway. If they add confirmation dialogs, then they would find something else to complain against it.
So they should just make it more integrated like they do with the other extensions they ship and be done with it.

adding a VPN was never one of the most requested features Vivaldi ever had, or I am completely blind or drunk https://forum.vivaldi.net/category/185/desktop-feature-requests?sort=most_votes&page=1 or you are making things up.

Just have a look at how many people keep asking for it for years lol.
And eventually they stopped because there were the same and same replies that it would never be added.
https://forum.vivaldi.net/search?in=titles&term=VPN&matchWords=all&by=&categories=185&searchChildren=true&hasTags=&replies=&repliesFilter=atleast&timeFilter=newer&timeRange=&sortBy=relevance&sortDirection=desc&showAs=posts&page=1

Therefore the best solution would still be to just say after clicking that button that "Hi, starting with this release we offer <blah blah>. If you are interested press continue in order to install the Proton PVN extension needed, "it's open-source and totally checked by us" -and whatever other friendly sauce you want, I think you got the point already-. And adding "you can completely remove it anytime from 'there'", but again, they didn't want user feedback, so it did what it did now.

No, the best solution would be to be an OEM extension like all the extensions Vivaldi installs and not bother with nonsense.
And just add in Vivaldi settings the option to enable/disable the OEM extension the same way they have options for Google store and Hangouts.

errantKnight

@Catweazle said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:>

The MAGA support by Proton isn't true, it was about an tuit out of context, related to the antitrust lawsuite, which was spreeded by Reddit. Proton has nothing to do with MAGA.
https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e

I have to respectfully disagree with this take, I think to get a proper understanding of the issue you have to delve into the official subreddits where this drama really took place. That Medium article is largely "apologism" for the behavior of the CEO, behavior Proton very clearly tried to back away from but still raises questions.

FWIW, I want to respect this forum isn't really for long back and forths on a political topic, I'll just refer to this article from a respected independent media outlet, that isn't someone's personal Medium blog post:

https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/

I will also note that fundamentally: the CEO was wrong. His argument is a specific Trump appointee is better positioned to go after big tech and enforce antitrust law than Democrats. Why he would say this is very hard to understand, the appointee he was praising has spent her entire career lobbying for big businesses. Almost immediately upon his inauguration Trump received huge donations from Big Tech, all of whose major CEOs have bent their knees in fealty.

I don't just object to Yen's political opinion, I object to his factual assertion--there is simply no evidence whatsoever the Trump Administration is interested in "reigning in big tech." In fact they are in the process of trying to use public resources to acquire TikTok for Oracle (a big tech firm owned by a mega billionaire Trump supporter.) Trump and his majordomo J.D. Vance have also been using the soft power of the U.S. government to threaten, and bully, longstanding European allies warning them to drop their big tech regulations, give U.S. big tech firms favorable tax treatment etc. These guys are the opposite of "reigning in big tech." Sorry, but Yen was dead wrong about this.

And if you dig into the subreddit drama, Proton's initial response was just to say "this was never an official statement from Proton", even though the CEO posted it under an official Proton account. They later changed their tune to "well we shouldn't post political opinions under official accounts." Then their CEO got on his personal account on Reddit and doubled down on literally everything he said, and expressed the typical tech CEO narcissistic ego that "everyone who disagrees with me just doesn't understand me." Because of course, no one could disagree with the immense genius of a tech CEO other than through misunderstanding.

npro

@electryon said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

Just have a look at how many people keep asking for it for years lol.

I checked your link, around 15-20 sparsely since 2018, that's literally nothing. I have nothing more to comment on this topic though.

electryon

@npro said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

I checked your link, around 15-20 from 2018, that's literally nothing. I have nothing more to comment on this topic though.

One last comment from me too. I won't comment any more on this topic.
There won't be any confirmation dialog or anything like that added.
I am 100% sure about that.
Why? Because Proton would never agree on this.
Something like that kind of warnings will make the masses and average Joe to think that there is something seriously wrong about Proton and it is some kind of virus that tries to hijack their browser.
Of course it won't be true, but it doesn't matter. This is how the masses think about all these warnings and dialogs.
Why on earth would Proton agree on that. There is a partnership, right? So both partners would have a say on that.
If I were Proton and Vivaldi came and insisted on that, I would call the partnership off because it could harm my brand to unaware people.

dwstudeman

There is only one problem: PayPal will ban you if you use it over a VPN. It happened to me for that very reason. Yes, they do audit.

Pesala

Proton VPN wants my email address to log on, so I declined the offer. I was going to test it, but having more spam is one step too far.

ThePfromtheO

@funtaril But you got a "What's New" page after updating the browser, didn't you? There, it says about they including Proton VPN in V.
Also, look here

[@yngve said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

the extension definitely installs when you click on the toolbar icon, not when logging in.

Yes, because:

Clicking the VPN icon is considered a positive indication that you actively want to activate/enable the VPN feature. That includes installing the extension (and keep in mind that the VPN logo is in the same area as Extension logos are placed, so it should be a reasonable indication that you are about to access an extension, also the tooltip says "Proton VPN". If you don't know what it is, maybe investigate a bit before clicking?).
It does not get used if you do not actually enable it. Nothing gets handed over unless you choose to actually do so. You can always uninstall the extension if you decide not to use it, but you can also just ignore it and it will do nothing.

Login can only be done through the Proton VPN extension, after it has been installed (since the process needs to access Proton's account servers using info only available in the extension), with two options: Login via your Vivaldi.net account, or by logging in using an existing account.
So what you and some others seem to want is a dialog saying "Do you REALLY want to install Proton VPN" if it hasn't already been installed, at which point I suspect that a number of users who know what is going on will file bug reports asking us to "remove that unnecessary dialog".

You may also look at this Vivaldi Social post https://social.vivaldi.net/@ruario/114235282044540368

ThePfromtheO

@Pesala You could just use an alias, what's so hard? Or a temporary email.

Nekomajin

@yngve
While I agree with you on the tendency that users ignore dialogs, it does not mean that software developers should abandon them. People need to be educated regarding safety and privacy, because it serves their own good. I am an IT teacher. It makes me furious when I see my students accept or dismiss dialogs without reading them. I firmly believe that the industry needs to spend more resources on fine-tuning this technology to find the best compromise between being informative and obstrusive.

The GDPR/cookie dialogs are the perfect example how it should not be done. But a bad implementation does not mean that the whole concept should be thrown out.

Nekomajin

@ThePfromtheO
Does this page explain the install mechanism of the extension?

ThePfromtheO

@yngve said in Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi:

What was discovered was that users would ignore (click through) warnings so that they could continue on with what they were doing, even if that meant doing the security/privacy equivalent of driving off a Mount Everest sized cliff (more colorful expressions exists).

Yes, completely agree with you, but you could just implement this for these ducks to have one less reason for making this ruckus.

ThePfromtheO

@luetage Sorry, but how did you find out it is written by an AI? Did you use AI-detecting software?