this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Technology

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[–] nailingjello@lemmy.zip 15 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

I was a VPNSecure customer with a lifetime subscription that was canceled by them recently. I was annoyed by the experience, but I also admit that I paid about $25 IIRC and that was over 5 years ago.

I used it occasionally as a backup and it was nice to have, but I definitely got my monies worth.

[–] thetrekkersparky@startrek.website 2 points 27 minutes ago

Yeah. I bought it at least 5 years ago as well for fairly cheap. I ended switching a few years ago because I had problems with my IP leaking, customer service wouldn't back to me, and I noticed the canary page went blank, so I assumed that something happened to them.

[–] SaltSong@startrek.website 90 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

I find it hard to believe that it's legal to buy a company, but not it's contractual obligations. Seems line a hell of a loophole for getting out of things you don't want to do.

[–] ture@lemmy.ml 24 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

They claim they didn't bought the contractual obligations, so to be fair they should cancel all subscription and not just the lifetime subscriptions. But obviously it's just a bullshit claim by some corpo...

[–] jonathan@lemmy.zip 20 points 3 hours ago

If the customers came across in the transaction, so did the contractual obligations. You can't have it both ways.

[–] aramova@infosec.pub 41 points 6 hours ago

Capitalism at work baby

[–] festus@lemmy.ca 21 points 6 hours ago

Probably legal (for the buying company) but customers should sue the original company and get paid out of the money used to buy it.

[–] cattywampas@lemm.ee 6 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This would almost certainly depend on the contracts themselves.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 7 points 2 hours ago

Contracts always have some bullshit like: "We can do whatever the fuck we want. Service not guaranteed. We have the right to refuse service to anyone. Lifetime is defined by the lifetime of the service which is defined by us. Can change at anytime."

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 38 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (5 children)

I have stopped buying lifetime subscriptions to cloud services unless they pay off within a year or two since you can't guarantee that they'll be honoured. Any longer and you stand to lose too much money.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 4 points 2 hours ago

Good advice in general; even contractual fuckery aside, you can't guarantee a company will even still exist this time next year.

[–] mp3@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

The only time it paid off for me was for VPN Unlimited and Plex and even then, I barely use the former and Plex is being enshittified.

[–] ianhclark510@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 minutes ago

Yooo, fellow VPN Unlimited user, how long before they get bought up and we’re in the same boat as these guys 😂

[–] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 8 points 5 hours ago

Same is true for any tech thing. Sure, you can buy a perpetual licence for something but if you’re running it on anything but an isolated device then you will at minimum need security updates or the source code to fix it yourself. Same is true for things like console games where eventually the hardware will just die and it may become too expensive to replace it. Even emulation is case-by-case since some games use obscure calls which have no adequate emulation. Software doesn’t exist in isolation. For that, you have to revert to pen, paper and some analog tech.

[–] HadOwenKiRoast@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Do you have a nebula subscription? If yes, what is your opinion of their lifetime tier?

I can't convince myself for the 300 dollar lifetime but do realize i would totally get the hours out of it.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago

I just have the regular subscription. I wouldn't pay for the lifetime one. I want to support them but I am not confident enough that they'll be around for the long term since video hosting is a hard business to make money from.

[–] Ashen44@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 hours ago

I've had a nebula subscription for a couple years, and honestly I don't think the lifetime subscription is worth it. If you can find a deal on a year plan it's crazy cheap, and I don't think nebula is big enough to be certain it'll still be relevant by the time a lifetime plan would pay itself off. Maybe if it got more popular, but its place as a more specialized type of video platform, and especially a subscription based one, makes me a bit doubtful that it'll grow significantly any time soon.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 1 points 5 hours ago

Simplelogin just opened up their lifetime subscription deal. I think I calculated it and it will pay off in 4 or 5 years. I don't think I will get it though since I have proton unlimited already

[–] Brad@beehaw.org 47 points 6 hours ago

The provider the article is taking about is VPNSecure.