Proton VPN is now integrated into Vivaldi’s desktop browser to offer users enhanced privacy protections and all the VPN functionality they need without requiring any additional downloads or updates. Bringing together Proton VPN and Vivaldi provides a superior online experience, combining Proton’s best-in-class VPN with Vivaldi’s power, advanced customization, and uncompromising stance on user control.
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As governments and users alike reassess their relationship with tech, especially in light of escalating geopolitical tensions, there has been a huge increase in demand for independent, non-aligned, and values-driven solutions.
Europe needs European alternatives. In fact, everybody deserves European alternatives. And with Vivaldi and Proton, you’re getting exactly that. No hidden backdoors. No state surveillance. No alignment with any political agenda, just a commitment to keeping the web open, secure, and democratic.
How to Activate Proton VPN in Vivaldi
It couldn’t be simpler:
Make sure you’re using the latest version of Vivaldi on desktop.
Click the ”VPN” button in the toolbar.
Log in or create a Vivaldi account.
Flip the switch. That’s it. You’re protected.
For those who aren’t familiar with Vivaldi, it is a partially closed source browser built on top of Chromium, based out of Norway. It’s known for its innovative, modern feeling UI/UX. It isn’t known for being particularly privacy focused but it also isn’t privacy invasive and doesn’t have a business model that incentizes undermining privacy.
Really wish Brave would partner with Proton too instead of them doing it with Guardian VPN. I’m sure Proton would oblige.
But interesting to see new partnerships Proton is having with companies. I’m still not fully sure what to think of it. I’m sure they are simply business decisions on the thinking that - surely Proton doesn’t want people to use Vivaldi since it is not as private as other available free alternatives but if people are bent upon using it, might as well use Proton for the users that are amenable to VPNs anyway.
But I wonder how much of these partnerships tangibly or intangibly imply Proton’s endorsement of the product/company of partnership.
That’s how I would interpret it. The “partnerships” seem too all over the place to be anything else, and some of the “partners” are not of the same caliber as Proton.
I also think “partnership” is probably too strong of a word, in some cases it seems to be closer to “cross promotion.” I don’t perceive any of these “partnerships” as Proton endorsing the other company (though Proton should bear in mind, that many people will perceive their partnerships as endorsements).
surely Proton doesn’t want people to use Vivaldi
Proton seems to have a strategy of capitalizing on opportunities when they present themselves:
Launched Protonmail following the Snowden revelations.
Laucnhed ProtonPass soon after the Lastpass breach
Most likely partnering with Vivaldi to take advantage of the current enthusiasm among Europeans to transition to European alternatives (Vivaldi is a European company)
But I wonder how much of these partnerships tangibly or intangibly imply Proton’s endorsement of the product/company of partnership.
This is something Proton should probably clarify. Because some of the companies they’ve cross promoted with have been downright shady(EDIT: I was misremembering/wrong, I was thinking of a partnership between Brave and a very shady company, Proton was not involved).
I don’t think so and I highly doubt it. It would not make sense to buy a browser. They already have a lot on their plate with developing and improving their existing suite of products and services.
With the release of Vivaldi 7.3 today, the developers have announced their cooperation with VPN provider Proton, which is now firmly integrated into the browser alternative. By providing free access to protected connections, the browser will offer even more security in future.
It seems like Vivaldi has chosen the “safe route”, prioritizing their own resources by blocking potential spam accounts which often use anonymous email. Though one of the primary motivations for forcing PII, which I think is often the silent truth, could be to get you into a data identification pipeline, linking certain data points to you. Pretty unfortunate that you now have to trust Vivaldi here with your information to use this service while simply allowing anonymous emails would have given you a no-trust-needed solution.
I am glad though, and I probably should’ve realised earlier, this will make a large userbase of people more open to using a VPN, and Proton is not a bad name for a first introduction at all, now more people know about Proton’s existence and might take privacy more seriously : )
The Proton VPN feature seems to require a Proton Account.
Blocking the Sync on anonymous email probably doesn’t make much sense itself but a Vivaldi account can also link to the social[dot]vivaldi[dot]net Mastadon instance and [@]vivaldi[dot]net email accounts.
airmail[dot]cc seems to show up because of randsomware attacks in brace search before the actual email service so it makes sense that they’d block it on any service other than sync. They might simply not have developed a way to do that without blocking sync.
I think it goes without saying the Vivaldi / Proton integration isn’t really geared towards people here who are already more-than-aware of both services and already know how to use both of them.
This is very geared towards people who are all-in on Vivaldi and may not be as familiar with privacy tools and may not even use a VPN. In that situation, I’m 100% okay with this. It means Vivaldi users are being pushed towards one of the best VPNs on the market. And ideally exposes them to the Proton ecosystem.
I doubt anyone here will prefer this integration over their own browser + Proton VPN for desktop. We’re not really the target demographic.
A friend showed me an article, (admittedly, in Norwegian, so I was reading machine translation,) that said that downloads of Vivaldi are up 30% this year. Mostly to Europeans. Not sure if that’s year to year or total. Still, that’s a huge bump either way. I then tried to get them to download Vivaldi instead of using Chrome, but baby steps I suppose.
I have always kinda disliked Vivaldi because of their seemingly closed-source nature only to find out this article quite recently. It changed my mind. Oh, I am not going to use it. But I now accept them as an option
