Folks who signed up for al lifetime subscription with VPN provider VPNSecure have been discovering the true definition of “lifetime” when it comes to such deals. And it’s not the one they’d hoped to hear.

After new owners took over the company, these particular customers recently had their lifetime subscriptions canceled. The new operator of VPNSecure told them that it didn’t know about the lifetime deals when they acquired the business, adding that it was unable to honor them.

“To continue providing a secure and high-quality experience for all users, Lifetime Deal accounts have now been deactivated as of April 28th, 2025,” the company told customers in an email seen by Ars Technica. It added: “This was not a decision made lightly — but one made with the future of VPNSecure and all its users in mind.”

The same email said: “Unfortunately, the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) had been sold through platforms like StackSocial. 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.”

VPNSecure is attempting to placate impacted users with discounted deals starting at $1.87 a month, $19 for a year, or $55 for three years, compared to the usual rates of $10, $80, and $108, respectively. 

A company representative has claimed that the new team was unable to access the  customer database until “months” after it took ownership, with the takeover giving them “the tech, the brand, and the infrastructure/technology — but none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.”

In a more recent message sent to customers on May 11, the company said: “We did our due diligence — including reviewing the past 6-12 months of financials. But nowhere in the listing, profit and loss statements, or communication was there any mention of Lifetime Deals … We kept those accounts running for 2 extra years, entirely at our own cost — even though we never received a single cent from those subscriptions.”

The ongoing and rather sorry saga is a lesson for anyone considering a lifetime subscription with any service. The advice is to check the small print, as “lifetime” is most likely to mean a set period, or the lifespan of the company or offered service. In theory, it’s possible your “lifetime” subscription could be canceled the day after you sign it — if you were particularly unlucky. What it doesn’t mean is your lifetime, though if you croak before the company does, then you could argue that the subscription fulfilled its end of the bargain. Though actually you wouldn’t be able to because you’d be dead. 

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