Same company (no matter how hard they try to hide it), so unless it has better pricing or features, if you don't trust Nord, there's no reason you should trust Proton.
Though I do trust both, as Tesonet is based from here (Lithuania) and from my experiences with people who worked there, they have full trust in them and continue to use their services years after leaving the company.
> Same company (no matter how hard they try to hide it)
Do you mean that NordVPN and ProtonVPN are the same 'spiritually' in that they're both companies selling a VPN for profit?
Or is there genuinely some business connection between them that I've missed?
In the sense that there's a huge overlap of people who created Nord that are now working on Proton. Might be under the same employer indirectly (Tesonet or whatever they're called now). Whether officially they're under a different company/jurisdiction, that's a different thing.
From Tesonet[1]:
>We also provided ProtonVPN(opens in new tab) with operational and HR support when they decided to open an office in Vilnius.
>Contrary to all the myths and rumors, operations by different services have never been related to each other. The only common resources are the centralized HR and legal teams. We have strictly relied on this philosophy from the beginning in order to avoid any possible conflict of interest.
Though I do trust both, as Tesonet is based from here (Lithuania) and from my experiences with people who worked there, they have full trust in them and continue to use their services years after leaving the company.