Privacy tech company Proton AG breaks its own password manager Proton Pass with transition to MSIX build—and now advises turning off VPN to fix it
Update 1: I've now confirmed Proton's own VPN (Windows client) is the culprit, even when the browser doing the authenticating is excluded under split tunneling rules. I've notified Proton. No response as of this update. The VPN only needs to be disabled during the authentication/handoff. You can enable it after that and still get into Proton Pass. I'll update further if I discover any other anomalies.
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Proton has recently begun transitioning its password manager Proton Pass for Windows to a new MSIX build from the previous .exe installer. Once you install the new build, open it, and try to sign into it, you're auto-redirected to your default browser. That's where you authenticate into your Proton account. Once you do, you get a browser popup that you must manually click to redirect back to the Windows Proton Pass app. But even though you successfully authenticated via browser, the Proton Pass app itself refuses to process the handoff, throwing an "Invalid selector" error and locking you out.
I reported this defect to Proton Support. They suggested I try downgrading my privacy by turning off my VPN.
I then posted a terms-compliant reply to another redditor's comment about the same issue. I did this on Proton's sub r/ProtonMail. My reply was instantly shadow-banned.
This is increasingly Proton's blueprint: user finds bug, user reports bug, Proton says downgrade security as a workaround, user posts on Reddit, Proton shadow-bans user.