I’m quite angry at this. I’ve used Mullvad VPN without any obtrusive ads, with a clean interface that worked very well.

I stumbled upon a new Proton plan and decided I’d pay and sign up to give it a go to meet my growing needs. After turning on my computer, I’m greeted with a massive pop up advertisement that takes up ~30% of my screen. While scanning settings, I do not see an easy way to disable these promotional ads.

I feel like I’ve gone back in time and am using Norton software that I got with my HP Pavilion Windows XP pc.

I did a quick Internet search and see there’s a Reddit post from a year ago where a user complained about the same thing, but no solution was provided. If I find anything I’ll update this post. But right now I’m quite angry, and I’m venting because this is my first reaction to seeing this crap. I’m paying for a service and the last thing I want to see are pop up ads.

I’m going to have a serious think about whether or not I should cancel my subscription and instead just keep my Mullvad.

EDIT:

I finished checking Proton VPN’s settings and there is no option to disable promotional ads. I’ll contact Proton support and see what they advise. Will revert after I hear back from them and complete the Support interaction.

EDIT 2: I posted a reflective comment below, but I figure I’ll update this post. I first made this post shortly after I woke up, and my reaction was anger. Now that it’s been some time and I have had breakfast, my coffee, and been at work for a while, I realise I shouldn’t have reacted that way. I’m more disappointed than angry. I get it if Proton wants to have a pop up that appears once around the Black Friday sales day, which is fine. But at least Steam lets me disable pop up promotions. Why can’t Proton? If they won’t add a toggle to disable those, then fine I get it - but I only want to appear once. Or at least embed a banner in the Proton app, or just have an “Offers” button. I pay for a service, I don’t want pop ups as I personally feel they’re hostile to the User experience. Why should that feature exist when Mullvad’s UI is seamless, intuitive, and has no pop up ads? Anyway, I’m an adult and I reacted like I’m still a kid. Need to learn from this type of thing and be a better person - sorry, I’m having a reflective introspective moment here that no one should care about except me ha ha.

EDIT 3: Another user recommended I submit a feature request to improve Proton, which I have done so.

Here is where I posted and voted on my idea request:

“Add Settings toggle to disable pop up promotional ads from Proton (e.g., Black Friday promo)” - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/48959543-pop-up-notifications-in-the-proton-vpn-application#comments

And here is another idea request I found from someone else who posted something similar a few weeks ago on oct 14th, although their request is to just disable pop up ads entirely:

“Pop-up notifications in the Proton VPN application, specifically those promoting Proton Duo” - https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932836-proton-vpn/suggestions/48959543-pop-up-notifications-in-the-proton-vpn-application#comments

I think the suggestion here is that if you’re a Proton user and if this bothers you, it might be worth commenting and voting on my idea request to help with visibility to the Proton dev team.

I’ll post a final update once I complete my support interaction with proton support.