Proton

I've been using proton for as long as its been around. I'm a paid user. I have email, VPN, drive and pass apps. I have never had an ad show up in any of my apps, nor any special offers. I'm on android.

Interesting, and strange. I’m on iOS and a subscriber but I’ve never seen an ad.

I do believe around Black Friday there was a lightning bolt or some shit, when I clicked it was a Black Friday deal. Outside of that, nothing.

Speaking of unwanted ads, my gosh, that image hosting site you used nearly gave my phone cancer.

If you keep trying the support route, I figure I'll throw in my general tech support 2c, at the risk of it being unhelpful.

I've had to fight my natural temptation to "over specify" or "increase specificity" when tech support sometimes doesn't "get" my problem. the extra words (like "this is NOT about the emails") can seem like they're narrowing things down, but can instead make the canned response system or the underpaid human scanning the email confused about the context. I generally now suggest "underspecifying" - go for something simpler that requires someone to engage you somehow to resolve the problem. Like, "my problem is that I unsubscribed from your emails like you told me to, but I'm still getting them, it didn't work". Then suddenly, this might be a bug report of something broken. That gets a lot more attention.. upstream humans need to look at it to decide if it's something affecting just you or everyone on the whole system. When they are in the process of determining this, they'll have to notice you're referring to the push notifications and not actual emails in order to decide it's not a big problem waiting to happen for them.

This underspecificity has helped me a lot in getting better customer support. I never intend to lie outright or be rude... I just lower my skill level. A lot. To a low-tech user, the difference between a push notification and an email is not terribly clear. These support systems tend to work better on low-tech users because, well, most people are low-tech.

Did you check email preferences?

Sorry, couldn't resist it.

You sir are absolutely not alone about this! I mostly use Proton via the Web, and even with the Unlimited Subscription, I got ads all over Black Friday, and after about some family plan upgrades if I recall correctly. Their marketing have been off the charts, almost as bad as other VPN providers.

Although I trust Proton with my data, I really don't like some of their choices, pluss the lack of Linux support. I can see myself checking them out at a later point again, but for now I've had enough. Migrating to other services that suit me better:

• Bitwarden
• Mailbox
• Mullvad / IVPN (undecided)

I'm also unlimited, for years now. I've never seen an ad in the app.

Do you have a screenshot so we can see the ads or where they show up and start troubleshooting?

I had upgrade ads while using Unlimited as well, went back to free version

I've been actively using the Proton VPN app both on my android phone and on multiple Linux distros for a year+ now and I haven't ever gotten an ad in-app.

My android Proton VPN app I got from fdroid though, not from the Google Playstore, so maybe that makes a difference?

This was a common reported issue on their subreddit s between November to January. So, you can probably find many pictures of if there. Also, yes Proton is just another crappy company. I'll move to something with less restrictions once my subscription ends.

Seems like the support email is a canned response. Obviously still frustrating, but did you try clarifying with them in a response email?

did you actually turn off all the 'subscriptions'? the first shot you included has a still few enabled, including one that could be the magic thing to turn off (product announcements) what you're so worked-up over.

Proton subscriber for, maybe 5 years(?) here. I don't recall ever seeing an ad specifically in the app. That said, I must have seen an ad either in the app or by email, because that's how I was introduced to proton Pass, which I now use and I'm glad I was introduced.
Were you logged in at the time?
First thing to do with any new program is go to settings and set all notifications and privacy and opt-out stuff the way you want.

They sometimes have trouble reading what I'm actually saying sometimes too.

Just respond telling them that they didn't read what you typed and explain again that you're talking about the VPN app on android.

By the way, Android user and proton unlimited subscriber here, I've never seen any ads inside the proton VPN app on android. Not from proton, not from anything.