One of the stand-out features is ‘Discreet Icon,’ a new setting allowing users to disguise the Proton VPN app icon and make it appear as a weather, notes, or calculator app.
In countries governed by oppressive authoritarian regimes where many VPN tools, including Proton VPN, are banned, random physical checks performed by law enforcement on people’s devices could get them into trouble if a VPN app is found on their apps list.
The second highlighted feature is the addition of the ‘Stealth’ anti-censorship protocol to Proton VPN’s Windows client. This protocol allows users to disguise VPN traffic as regular internet traffic. Previously, the protocol was available on iOS, macOS, and Android.
Proton VPN will start providing new servers in the twelve countries at the bottom of the Freedom House Index and Democracy Index lists, where people need a trustworthy VPN more urgently. These countries are Afghanistan, Bahrain, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Yemen.
Interestingly, the servers are not situated inside these countries, but in neighbouring countries, and simulates an IP address of the target country.
It’s clear that Proton’s philosophy is quite divergent from Google’s philosophy. Google may provide services for “free” but it is using its users’ information to serve adverts and working with advertisers. Proton takes the opposite path by charging users for the services, but then providing them with privacy and not working with advertisers. It is good to see, though, that Proton is still providing a pretty robust free VPN service to users (whilst I think Google just recently discontinued their VPN service).
The thing to remember is that privacy does not go hand in hand with free services, as someone has to pay the bills or donate the time/resources.