- Proton VPN Free signups in Jordan increased after Discord went offline
- Government Bans Increasingly Lead to Increase in VPN Signups
- Jordan’s Discord users found a privacy-friendly workaround in Proton VPN Free
Proton VPN reported a significant increase in registrations in Jordan for its free VPN, coinciding with the recent Discord outage in the country.
Signups for Proton VPN Free, one of the best free VPNs on the market, increased from October 6, 2025, before peaking two days later on October 8. New signups remained double the daily average until October 13, when Proton VPN published a blog post revealing the trend.
A surge in Proton VPN downloads in Jordan comes as social media reports that Discord has stopped working in the country.
Although there are fears that the government will block the instant messaging and VoIP platform, no official confirmation has been made at the time of writing.
Discord users in Jordan will likely turn to the best VPN services, including Proton VPN, not only to circumvent potential internet censorship, but also to protect their privacy in a country described by Freedom House as having limited internet freedom.
Global State Censorship Fuels VPN Adoption
Social media reports suggest that the Discord outage in Jordan may not simply be a technical glitch, but rather a deliberate government-imposed block. The app has already been blocked in Russia and Turkey and recently suffered a data breach.
Discord is a popular communication platform. So when users started seeing the service go down, they quickly looked for ways to restore access. Proton VPN’s reputation for privacy makes it a natural choice.
Jordan’s Discord outage appears to be part of a larger pattern: Every time a popular social network or communications platform goes offline, Proton VPN consistently sees dramatic increases in signups and active usage.
This is demonstrated in recent reporting from TechRadar’s Chiara Castro, who highlighted Proton VPN’s usage spike of 35,000% in Afghanistan following a social media ban, as well as an 8,000% increase in Nepal, also due to social media restrictions.
Censorship is driving a rapid migration to VPNs, especially free VPNs like Proton VPN Free, which offer a convenient and free way to safely bypass blocks. Yet some internet users may resort to obscure free VPNs that lack proper encryption, sell user data, or even transmit credential logs directly to authorities, exposing them to serious legal and privacy risks.
How the Right VPN Can Help Bypass Censorship
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) circumvents censorship by encrypting your Internet traffic so that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) cannot see what you do online.
Connecting to a server outside of Jordan allows you to navigate the country’s internet restrictions and browse normally making you appear as if you are based in another country entirely.
Proton VPN offers a convenient, privacy-focused solution for anyone looking to bypass censorship at no cost. It operates within strict Swiss privacy laws and proved it did not keep records in a recent independent audit.
Although Proton VPN Free is one of the few free VPN services that offers unlimited bandwidth – and that should be more than enough to get around these types of internet restrictions – you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan to get the full power.
In Proton’s case, 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 benefits like unblocking streaming.