ProtonVPN

I tried proton in 2019. My life fell apart for a few years but now I've come back to proton again.

So is everything I do on my network 100% secure now? Sincere question. I am not a computer expert. Please tell me.

First of all a disclaimer: I am not upset about the removal of manual server selection as this is a free service. They don't need to provide such services at all, so something is better than nothing.

What happened:
This morning I opened the ProtonVPN app on my phone and got greeted with a message stating free accounts can now only use automatic server selection and addition of free servers in Poland and Romania.
However, I also noticed split-tunelling is now paywalled as well.

Now, this is rather weird. Split-tunelling is already in the app and is something that works only on the client side, thus not putting any extra load on the servers. Quite the contrary, actually, as it allows some apps to not use the VPN, thus use less bandwidth.
The automatic-selection-only allows for better load balancing, so that makes sense.

Now to the workaround.
They still allow manual OpenVPN and Wireguard setup even for free accounts, at least for now.
To do so, login to ProtonVPN and go to account. There's OpenVPN credentials which are used for OpenVPN authentication. Then go to downloads, select appropriate options including the specific server and download the ovpn config file.
Client: OpenVPN for Android
This app also supports split tunneling (edit config -> Allowed apps).

ProtonVPN has an article on how to set up this app, but it's really just importing the config and adding your OpenVPN ProtonVPN credentials which you grabbed before.

[Edit: With guidance from Proton Support, I switched VPN protocols in the application's preferences menu (https://protonvpn.com/support/how-to-change-vpn-protocols/), from IKEv2 to Smart, and afterwards I started seeing ads and trackers (etc.) blocked on the application's GUI again. I'll post any other relevant info I learn of here.]

Original post:
I use Proton VPN. I have a paid account. I like to use the NetShield feature to block malware, ads, and trackers. Typically, when I view ad- and tracker-bloated websites, Proton VPN records how many ads and trackers it's blocked during my current VPN session.

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that despite NetShield being on with the above settings, it no longer appeared to be blocking any ads or trackers per the print out on the GUI. I updated the program, and it's now up-to-date, but that hasn't fixed my issue.

Is anyone else experiencing this? What's going on, has Proton VPN stopped blocking those things or is the print out not working?

I'm trying to use ProtonVPN to set up split tunneling so that my tun0 is the only network device that is protected by ProtonVPN. I need this because I have file & web servers running on this Linux box (Ubuntu).

With previous VPNs I've used, I would use OpenVPN and add to the openvpn config and this work the way I intended:

route-nopull
route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0

With other VPNs I'd just run

curl --interface tun0 ip.me

And that would return a VPN ip address.

For some reason, ProtonVPN seems to be blocking me from using the same workflow. Is there a working guide for ProtonVPN to do what I'm trying to do?

It is so annoying that I write a bash script that runs on startup and pastes the password when it detects the Window

If you need specs, I am running Kubuntu's latest LTS on a ThinkPad L390 [[NON-YOGA]]. With Intel Core i5 8 gen and 8 GB of RAM

Hello fediverse. Any news for protonpass global availability?

My school is blocking protonvpn and others such as iVPN and mullvad. So how can I install the linux repo to my computer if i'm connected to school wifi.