from the team:
Hi everyone,
It has become increasingly common for authoritarian governments to go beyond purely online technical measures to discourage or block VPN use. Certain countries have even begun demanding citizens hand over their smartphones for physical inspection. Protecting free speech and fighting censorship is a core part of our mission and we’re committed to doing what we can to help users around the world.
With today’s announcement, we hope to give people the tools they need to bypass censorship and access a free and fair internet wherever they are:
- Windows Stealth: Proton’s unique anti-censorship protocol, Stealth, comes to Windows, disguising VPN traffic as normal internet traffic, making it almost impossible to detect when someone is using a VPN: https://protonvpn.com/blog/stealth-vpn-protocol
- New servers: in 12 countries among those at the bottom of the Freedom House Index and the Democracy Index
- Discreet Icon: Android users can customize the Proton VPN app icon and name, and even disguise it to look like another unrelated application to protect users in authoritarian regimes where VPN users may be at risk.
Proton VPN’s mission is to ensure freedom of speech and fight online censorship everywhere. Here’s how to get started with Proton VPN for free: https://protonvpn.com/free-vpn
Let us know what you think. You can also propose, vote, and discuss feature requests on ~User Voice~.
Proton Team
For those asking about Stealth on Linux, quote from the team:
With Wireguard for Linux about to come out of beta and we are planning to bring Stealth to Linux as well.
Yes please.
YES! Stealth is awesome, I would love to use it on Linux.
This is not something I personally will benefit from, but I’m happy for those that will. These are great features.
I was really hoping Stealth could get around reddit’s new network block, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like it can. Still gets blocked
That’s the “wrong kind” of block. This is supposed to avoid censorship from your local network administrator (e.g., you’re at the train station and they’re censoring stuff) not the remote network administrator.
What network block do they have?
Pretty much any VPN is blocked on the “new” reddit site. As another user said, the “old” site still works (for now)
It blocks all non-residential IP addresses, besides the ones they have on whitelist.
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Stealth was already a thing though?
https://web.archive.org/web/20240704205425/https://protonvpn.com/blog/stealth-vpn-protocol/
Very confused by the “new” post with the same URL announcing an existing thing. The only new part seems to be “for Windows” but that’s not clear at all from the blog post.
But does it support port forwarding??
