VPN service cancels customers’ lifetime subscriptions after takeover, says new owners didn’t know they existed

WTF?! When you see an advertisement for a “lifetime” subscription to something, always remember that it rarely means your lifetime. Those who took out lifetime subscriptions to VPNSecure discovered this when the company was taken over by new owners who promptly canceled the subs. Their excuse? They didn’t know some customers had them.

In an email posted on Reddit from “The VPN Secure Team” sent to lifetime subscription holders, it’s explained that VPNSecure was acquired in 2023. The deal included the technology, domain, and customer database, but not the liabilities.

“Unfortunately, the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) had been sold through platforms like StackSocial,” reads the mail.

“We discovered this only months later – when a large portion of our resources were strained by these LTD accounts and high support volume from users, who through part of the database, provided no sustaining income to help us improve and maintain the service.”

As a result of this, the new owners began deactivating lifetime accounts that had been dormant for six months. While it’s claimed that this was “technically fair,” – for some reason – the new owners seem shocked that it led to a wave of negative reviews.

After a section in which the email highlights an alleged message from a customer who notes that Geni.com’s lifetime subs were converted to 5-year subscriptions after its acquisition, the new owners have decided to do the same – except they’ll be offering a maximum of three years and charging a discounted rate.

VPN Secure deactivated all Lifetime Deal accounts
byu/luckyuglydawg invpns

All VPNSecure Lifetime Deal accounts were deactivated as of April 28, 2025. Those who were on the plan can grab a new subscription for either $1.87 for a month (usually $9.95), $19 for a year (usually $79.92), or $55 for three years (usually $107.64). They have until May 31 to take advantage of these offers, after which time they will have to pay the same as everyone else.

Ars Technica reports that a follow-up email from VPNSecure shed more light on the situation. It states that InfiniteQuant Ltd, which is a different company than InfiniteQuant Capital Ltd, acquired VPN Secure in an “asset only deal.”

It goes on to say that while the buyers received the tech, brand, infrastructure, and tech, they received none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.

It’s also claimed the Lifetime Deals sold by the old team between 2015 and 2017 were not disclosed to InfiniteQuant Ltd, but it kept the accounts running for 2 extra years despite never receiving a “single cent from those subscriptions.” So stop being ungrateful, basically.

The final part of the message claims that anyone who didn’t see the original message explaining all this must have it in their spam folder or simply missed it completely.

The new owners said they didn’t sue the seller over withholding the information on lifetime subs because “a corporate lawsuit would’ve cost more than the entire purchase of the business.” The email also states that the buyers could have simply shut down VPNSecure but instead “chose the hard path.”

Note the date

While it’s claimed the lifetime subscriptions were sold between 2015 and 2017, typing “VPNSecure lifetime subscriptions” into Google Search shows a 2021 ad on ZDNet for this $40 plan. An ad for a $28 lifetime subscription also ran on the site in 2022.

Lifetime subscriptions are rarely actual lifetimes. VPNSecure’s plans lasted up to 20 years, according to online comments. There’s always the chance new owners of companies won’t honor the contracts either. Whether InfiniteQuant Ltd really didn’t know about the subscriptions can’t be confirmed, but it’s led to a Trustpilot score of 1.2 for the VPN and pages of angry comments.