Privacy Without Compromise: Proton VPN is Now Built Into Vivaldi

electryon

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

@yngve

Clicking the VPN icon is considered a positive indication that you actively want to activate/enable the VPN feature.

It took decades industrywise to educate people to expect some kind of confirmation/warning prompt with an INSTALL button. So no, clicking on anything, which does not have a clear install/add/download/etc label can not be considered as a positive indicator.

In case you do not know Vivaldi comes with 6 extensions pre-installed.

Google Store
Vivaldi Picture-In-Picture
Vivaldi Theme Store
Chromium PDF Viewer
Google Hangouts
Vivaldi

Should they ask for every extension they ship to be installed or not?
Vivaldi made a huge mistake.
They should ship the VPN extension the same way they ship the other 6 extensions they pre-install.
By using the oem flag, uninstallable and even hidden from the extensions list. Because it is part of a built in functionality.
Huge mistake they added it as a "normal" extension.
Now they have to apologize... why they haven't put confirmation dialogs.
Huge mistake by them.

Cheun

See I had my if's and's or but's despite using this browser for years and somehow ya'll manage to reassure me that I'm making the right choice everytime.

Rabert

I was hoping that this would allow for me to get rid of my VPN subscription. Unfortunately, it doesn't. I could select between locations at the first day, and ever since it routes my connection from Germany to the other side of the planet in Japan only, any other location requires a (comparatively costly) subscription. Seems it selects the farthest and thus slowest connection for me. Useless, to me it's simply a button leading to a subscription form.

errantKnight

I'm very disappointed by this decision.

I was a long time subscriber to Proton, but cancelled all of my proton subscriptions in early 2025 when I became aware that their CEO had made social media posts concerning their support for American politicians / political parties I find deeply and gravely immoral (I don't need to rehash it here, people can investigate for themselves if they are interested.) And support for those politicians also leads me to question Proton CEO's own morals, ethics, commitment to privacy etc, as the political faction he took time to praise is against all of those things.

It is unfortunate I as a consumer made an informed decision to sever a relationship with Proton only to have this extension from their company put into my browser (and yes, I know I can remove the button from my toolbar and uninstall the extension, the point stands.) I sadly have to consider if I want to continue my relationship with Vivaldi.

TyrionTargaryen

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

@TyrionTargaryen Weird that you didn't know what to do from the first...

I have a tendency of not trusting my first instinct, which in this case was to do exactly what I ended up doing.

TyrionTargaryen

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

I think the better approach would be to create a new category of recommended extensions on Extensions Vivaldi page and put Proton VPN there with a button to install it. (Also uBO extension)

That what Firefox has.

And not that "install VPN button" on the Address Bar that suddenly appears out of nowhere and automatically installs something without any user confirmation when you click on it.

PS: I don't like when random buttons appear on Address Bar like that Share Vivaldi button.

This is a great idea. I hope Vivaldi learns from this experience.

Look at what Firefox has been doing over the years, forcing things on its userbase and bleeding users constantly. I was one of them.

I've said it from the start when I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi. I don't "marry" companies. I give chances to correct, and I try not to be harsh, but ultimately I will pick something else if I see that the changes in the software and of values are too much.

Recently Vivaldi changed the address bar, downgrading it, not allowing us to sort the priority of the results, not grouping the results, and I'm only hanging on because there's a setting in the Experimental section that resets it to the old address bar. But this is exactly what drove me away from Firefox years ago (I went to Chrome and Edge, before going back to Firefox when they reverted the change to their address bar).

In the case of the VPN, by chance I was already a Proton user and had the extension installed, so this in particular is not a huge problem for me. But it does make my eyebrows rise that they put a button there and the extension installs as soon as it's pressed without so much as a confirmation or anything. Moreover, I'm subscribed to the RSS of the Vivaldi updates, and I've been seeing them working on the partnerships with the search engines... however I hadn't seen anything mentioned about this partnership with Proton.

Proton has been on trial for me, due to the recent events almost everyone is aware of. Now it seems Vivaldi must be carefully monitored as well.

Please, consider what your users are saying.

zau4man

I couldn't pass by and not express my "fie". It's disgusting when an extension that is not associated with the browser authors, and even with a rating of 2.6, is installed during a browser update, without asking the user's permission. I understand why this is done. The extension's user base supposedly grows, installations grow, and Vivaldi's authors get money. But this kind of monetization is not on the way.

jbove

This is a great collaboration. But me to be able to "log in" to write this comment, I had to accept "third party cookies" first... Otherwise the form's "Login" button just redirected to the same page.

jbove

@rabert: I didn't have this problem; it selected a server in the Netherlands for me, I am based in Germany. I believe the time of day makes a big difference.

Lasarev

Вы ошибаетесь. Другие приложения VPN из интернет-магазина chrome Касперский не блокирует!

DerSchlingel

@Catweazle Concerning donations I remember them being very hesitant and as you said allowing only because of some people wanting to help und support.
But in my experience this has changed significantly. You'll see "support this browser"-icons quite everywhere lately. And there's even much more talk about donating. You also see it in the badges that are given to supporters among whom there are even employees.
This is a quite a move from: "We give you the opportunity, if you really really want to give us some money" to "help us build this wonderful browser that you probably love like we do" - isn't it?

luetage

@zau4man What are you talking about? Of course Vivaldi is associated with Proton, they partnered up. Just like Vivaldi is associated with Quwant, Ecosia, Startpage, etc.

Pesala

@errantKnight For me, it is the opposite. I share your opinions about Trump being deeply immoral, but so too was Joe Biden (and most other presidents before him). Recent imprisonment of British patriots for criticising the government, or getting upset at the rape and murder of children by immigrants (many of them illegal immigrants), has led me to wonder if I need to start using a VPN to conceal my identity when posting online.

Never before have I thought that expressing conservative views would be censored, censured, and even criminalised. The Liberals are at an all-time low of popularity in the US and free speech is in danger in Europe like never before. (Free speech does not mean the freedom to incite violence, or to slander others; just the option to use language or express opinions that might offend someone).

Pesala

@zau4man The extension is not installed on upgrading. Clicking the VPN button will install it and enable it. Only logging in will activate it. I just updated to the latest Snapshot, which now has the VPN button. As you can see, the extension is not installed.

Installed Extension.png

IMO, the only change needed is to clarify that the button will install the extension, or better still, remove the button and provide a checkbox in Settings, Privacy and Security to install and enable the extension.

rpsgc

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this but I'm having several issues with the VPN:

• Not auto connecting on start (it is enabled)
• It keeps connecting me to a (very slow) US server (I'm in Europe).
• It looses connection and doesn't reconnect when the computer comes out of sleep.

Their contact form doesn't have an option for Vivaldi and I don't have an account with them.

Catweazle

@rpsgc, I use the CyberGhost extension, it's a proxy which permits me to skip some country restrictions. In it's free versión it has only 4 countries, but which you can freely select, no logs, no speed throttle, encrypted, no datalimit, enough for my needs. CyberGhost also has a very good VPN for Desktop (paid).

Catweazle

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

I'm very disappointed by this decision.

I was a long time subscriber to Proton, but cancelled all of my proton subscriptions in early 2025 when I became aware that their CEO had made social media posts concerning their support for American politicians / political parties I find deeply and gravely immoral (I don't need to rehash it here, people can investigate for themselves if they are interested.) And support for those politicians also leads me to question Proton CEO's own morals, ethics, commitment to privacy etc, as the political faction he took time to praise is against all of those things.

It is unfortunate I as a consumer made an informed decision to sever a relationship with Proton only to have this extension from their company put into my browser (and yes, I know I can remove the button from my toolbar and uninstall the extension, the point stands.) I sadly have to consider if I want to continue my relationship with 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

Zalex108

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

@luetage It continues trying to connect every time I start the browser, unless I go to disable the extension.

Hi,
On SNAP 7.4.3648.3 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Works fine disabling the Auto connect from the settings

npro

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

In case you do not know Vivaldi comes with 6 extensions pre-installed.

Google Store
Vivaldi Picture-In-Picture
Vivaldi Theme Store
Chromium PDF Viewer
Google Hangouts
Vivaldi
Should they ask for every extension they ship to be installed or not?

Well of all those 6, 3 are Vivaldi-made, Chromium is what Vivaldi is based on anyway so it is basically "Vivaldi", and Chromium is basically Google's owned open-source project so it includes the Google Store for the extensions and themes anyway, while the VPN extension is written by Proton AG which is a 3rd-party. So the question would be only about Google Hangouts basically. But I agree with you about that mistake, and that is what happens when you bypass your standard release model in order to... "surprise" everyone.

luetage

@Catweazle You do realize this article is AI trash, do you?