- Registrations for Proton VPN Free in Jordan spiked after Discord went offline
- Government-imposed bans are increasingly resulting in VPN signup surges
- Jordan’s Discord users have found a privacy-respecting workaround in Proton VPN Free
Proton VPN has reported a significant spike in signups from Jordan for its free VPN, coinciding with the country’s recent Discord outage.
Signups with Proton VPN Free, one of the best free VPNs on the market, rose from October 6, 2025, before peaking two days later on October 8. New registrations remained double the daily average until October 13, when Proton VPN published a blog post revealing the trend.
A spike in downloads of Proton VPN in Jordan comes amid social media reports that Discord stopped working in the country.
Although there’s concern that the government is blocking the instant messaging and VoIP platform, no official confirmation has emerged at the time of writing.
Discord users in Jordan are likely to turn to the best VPN services, Proton VPN included, to not only bypass potential internet censorship but also protect their privacy in a country described by Freedom House as having limited internet freedom.
Worldwide state censorship fuel VPN adoption
Social media reports suggested that Jordan’s Discord outage may not be merely a technical glitch but rather a deliberate, government-imposed block. The app has previously been blocked in Russia and Turkey, and recently suffered a data breach, too.
Discord is a popular communication platform, so when users started seeing the service go dark, they quickly looked for ways to restore access. Proton VPN’s reputation for strong privacy protection made it a natural choice.
Jordan’s Discord outage appears to be part of a broader pattern: whenever a popular social media or communication platform is taken offline, Proton VPN consistently records dramatic surges in signups and active usage.
This is evidenced in recent reports from TechRadar’s Chiara Castro, who highlighted Proton VPN’s 35,000% usage spike in Afghanistan in the wake of a social media ban, as well as an 8,000% increase in Nepal, also for social media restrictions.
Censorship prompts a rapid migration to VPNs, particularly free VPNs like Proton VPN Free, which provide a convenient, cost-free way of safely bypassing blocks. Yet some internet users may resort to obscure free VPNs that lack proper encryption, sell user data, or even hand over identifying logs directly to authorities – putting them at serious privacy and legal risk.
How the right VPN can help bypass censorship
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) circumvents censorship by encrypting your internet traffic so your internet service provider (ISP) can’t see what you’re doing online.
Connecting to a server outside Jordan lets you navigate the country’s internet restrictions and browse as normal by making you appear as if you're based in another country entirely.
Proton VPN provides a practical, privacy-first solution for anyone looking to bypass censorship at no cost. It operates under Switzerland’s strong privacy laws and has proved it doesn’t keep logs in a recent independent audit.
While Proton VPN Free is one of the few free VPN services to offer unlimited bandwidth – and it should be more than enough to bypass these types of internet restrictions – you'll need to upgrade to a premium plan to benefit from the full powerhouse.
In the case of Proton, this includes access to one of the largest server networks of any VPN (over 15,000 servers in 126 countries), advanced security features, and other perks like streaming unblocking.
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