I believe in celebrating every small victory! To be honest, the main reason I wanted to post this is because it was a small hassle and I hope to help someone else avoid it.

I figure I’m probably not the only one on Lemmy who might be shopping for a VPN.

Spoiler alert, there’s nothing about the offer in the link.

The link is just the general terms of service. Don’t use this VPN to do illegal stuff, etc.

Literally the only way to know that this is not available to existing or previous users is to email their customer service and wait to hear back. Hence, mildly infuriating.

There are a lot of companies and subscriptions that offer annual deals. It’s a two year agreement fully paid.

They even have a login for existing users after accepting the deal. What kind of sense does that make?

I’ve had similar frustrations with trying to a change a bundle of services. Once you add any service to your account, it’s basically impossible to remove. That’s why my account lapsed in the first place. I just wanted to remove the unused Proton drive. I had to cancel the renewal, wait for the current term to expire, and then purchase a brand new service with just the VPN.

I understand they are a business and they want to market their bundled services, but I also am more likely to patronize a company that respects user choice.

People trust them with their data, their photos, their browsing history, and their passwords. Their customer service policies do nothing to earn that trust.

I didn’t miss it. You can pay double as an existing customer on the same two-year plan, which is still a discount from the “official” price. As far as I know, that’s not a Black Friday deal. It’s just their regular discount that they run periodically.

The frustrating part is only that they didn’t give any indication on the ad or the promotion or the terms that this was for new accounts only.

I’m a previous customer looking to start a new account. I never had any problems with their VPN, and the pricing is fair, but it’s hardly the only option out there.

They could have just labeled it for new customers only and I wouldn’t have an issue.

Instead, when I click on the offer, there’s an option to log in with an existing account. When you log in, the price doubles with no explanation. They could remove the option to log in from the deal, or they could have a simple pop-up or explanation when you log in that the deal is only for new accounts. Without any indication on the ad or the terms, or even after logging in directly from the ad, it creates a frustrating and mildly infuriating experience.

Yep. If it said “for new subscribers only,” I wouldn’t have bothered trying to set it up on my lapsed to count. It’s a waste of my time and theirs and slightly sketchy.

And here I’ve been throwing away all my dead mosquitoes like a sucker.

Yeah, it operates like a VPN. On my wife’s phone, I installed tailscale and set it as the “always on” VPN so that she never has to touch it. The same goes for computers. You can have it set as a startup app, and it should automatically connect every time.

On some devices, if you want to use another VPN, it can get complicated.

Tailscale only responds to the range of connections that it’s in charge of, so it doesn’t interfere with connecting to normal internet, etc.

I use Tailscale. It’s much simpler. Just install it on the host and client devices and everything is securely connected.

You may also be interested in Calibre Web Automated (which is similar but with more features)

Yeah, but I couldn’t find a better image for the meme

How you doin Lisbon?

There are some tweaks you can usually do on the server/host side as well. That’s particularly helpful if you use Thunderbird on multiple devices, such as desktop and phone.

Hopefully it will be even easier over time to sync settings between devices — I’d love to see filters and signatures across devices one day.

Why don’t they ask Ghislaine for some?

Yet he opposes the mechanisms that would facilitate this, namely a wealth tax and Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Yes, technology - when democratized - can lead to better lives for people. When It is only capitalized, it tends to do the opposite.

…And other signs that you may be in a cult.

You can already use an open source OS on most phones. There are several options mentioned in the article. This is about the underlying firmware that controls the antennas, etc. According to the article, the project is focused on getting it working on “at least one phone.”

You are right that it’s a good idea to put an open source OS, especially on their phones. It’s an easy way to extend the lifetime of a useful device.

I remember experts saying 5 or 10 years ago that the increased standardization and centralization of the internet would lead to more frequent and widespread internet blackouts.

First AWS, and now this. It looks like they’re right.

Admirable, although it will take a long time just to reverse engineer a single device. Given how quickly phones change, even the same model from one generation to the next, it’s hard to see the long term or widespread impact.

But who knows? They may uncover a process through this project that makes it more efficient or provides new insights to make open source software and firmware even better.