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NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

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Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#171

Post by sbierwagen »

michaelmrose wrote: post #170
rsync wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Honestly, nothing holds up to ... (VPN provider)" If you're serious you send a machine, that you own, to a colo provider and you register for service with a corporate entity that you created for just that purpose. Your name exists nowhere and ... regulatory inquiries are directed to your corporate contact email. Or, if you feel like that's a heavy burden and you don't attach any value to the physical machine (some o…

For practical purposes the only people who can penetrate a simple vpn service are potentially a government order to start recording your traffic that is legal based on jurisdiction or a dedicated hacker. It looks to me that NEITHER would be prevented by you using a colocated machine. It's not like your colocation provider is incapable of compromising you and probably would if ordered to do so in a jurisdiction where…

These guys say they'll colo a raspberry pi for $9 a month: https://www.endoffice.com/picolo.html

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#172

Post by mypalmike »

dheera wrote: post #132
justnotworthit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think corporate IT or Starbucks or AWS is more trustworthy than "some Mullvad dude"? Isn't it possible that Mullvad is more trustworthy? Isn't it more possible to know about Mullvad than what's going on at Starbucks or AWS?

I don't consider corporate IT or Starbucks to be trustable. AWS I would "trust" slightly more only because I get to implement the infrastructure and among the sea of trillions of requests they serve it would be a bit more of a challenge for them to figure out which of those requests are VPN browsing data and clean that data. I can also mildly obfuscate and pollute requests using their own infrastructure and make it h…

Why would AWS need to Wireshark your traffic? If law enforcement came to them with IP logs from some target machine, it's just a matter of looking at AWS outbound NAT logs to find your account.

Of course, either approach should work if the goal is merely to disassociate your traffic from your identity in order to keep marketing companies knowing your interests. Your approach is more provably reliable, but some VPN providers do provide 3rd party audits and such which seems a reasonable way to establish trust.

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#173

Post by [deleted] »

vmception wrote: post #153
boring_twenties wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use Mullvad but got sick of having to pay them via Bitcoin (or Bitcoin Cash, lol). I emailed them about accepting Monero directly and they said something like "we would like to but it's too much work." Ended up switching to IVPN, which actually costs more but is worth it for me not to have to deal with those shitcoins.

But you could always pay them with Monero You can pay any bitcoin invoice with Monero and people have been doing that for 6 years

[deleted]

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#174

Post by SifJar »

iFreilicht wrote: post #100
fasicle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audible might be the exception, I'm very happy with it.

Very crappy if you want to cancel after you forgot to get new audiobooks for a few months. You lose all your credit, and they don’t say that during the cancellation process. I gifted 6 months of payment to Audible just because they avoided to inform me about that.

FWIW last time I tried to cancel & still had credits, Audible did warn me I'd lose them if I cancelled (so I quickly used the credits before cancelling - thanks to their generous return policy, shouldn't be an issue if I change my mind about one of the books I chose hastily before cancelling)

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#175

Post by StavrosK »

boring_twenties wrote: post #141
vmception wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they take bitcoin? I’ve seen various invoicing systems that completely break in Tor+JS and in all noJS environments. If they shoehorned bitpay in, its probably not tapping into the utility of having bitcoin payment options. I like paying invoices with Monero over Tor, while the merchant receives bitcoin that a third party pushed to them. I’ve been doing that for at least half a decade. But if I can’t access th…

I used to use Mullvad but got sick of having to pay them via Bitcoin (or Bitcoin Cash, lol). I emailed them about accepting Monero directly and they said something like "we would like to but it's too much work." Ended up switching to IVPN, which actually costs more but is worth it for me not to have to deal with those shitcoins.

I really love paying with Monero as well. Fast, super cheap and anonymous. It's definitely my favorite coin to use (since I don't like speculation). I just wish it were more widespread as a payment option.

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#176

Post by midasuni »

rasguanabana wrote: post #122
midasuni wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it? I don’t recall giving A&A permission to deal with my data in any nefarious way, i’d doubt they would anyway. https://www.aa.net.uk/

This may be very different in countries different than yours.

I wasn’t making a blanket claim. Op told me my isp is bad. My isp is not bad. I’m certain that a vpn provider would be less trustworthy than my isp.

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#177

Post by sneak »

rsync wrote: post #161
notRobot wrote: post #5

Honestly, nothing holds up to Mullvad [1]. They don't even take an email address while creating accounts, and you can pay easily with Bitcoin or even with cash mailed to them. I'm not affiliated, just a very happy customer. Mullvad is also who Mozilla trusts for the Mozilla VPN [2]. You can sign up with that if you'd like Mozilla to get a cut. [1]: https://mullvad.net/ [2]: https://vpn.mozilla.org/

"Honestly, nothing holds up to ... (VPN provider)" If you're serious you send a machine, that you own, to a colo provider and you register for service with a corporate entity that you created for just that purpose. Your name exists nowhere and ... regulatory inquiries are directed to your corporate contact email. Or, if you feel like that's a heavy burden and you don't attach any value to the physical machine (some o…

From a security perspective, this is equivalent to renting a dedicated server. Once it leaves your possession, it isn't really "your hardware" anymore from a data security standpoint.

Also, as others have pointed out, all you have to do is sniff the traffic going in to the machine, something both the colo and ISP and upstreams are trivially able to do to obtain your residential or GSM IP, linked to your name/identity.

This is bad advice. Mullvad is like five bucks and offers equivalent privacy.

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#178

Post by [deleted] »

Thorentis wrote: post #167
rsync wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Honestly, nothing holds up to ... (VPN provider)" If you're serious you send a machine, that you own, to a colo provider and you register for service with a corporate entity that you created for just that purpose. Your name exists nowhere and ... regulatory inquiries are directed to your corporate contact email. Or, if you feel like that's a heavy burden and you don't attach any value to the physical machine (some o…

This is far less anonymous than sending cash in the mail to Mullvad. There is a paper trail leading back to you when you register the corporate entity.

[deleted]

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#179

Post by hda111 »

notRobot wrote: post #5

Honestly, nothing holds up to Mullvad [1]. They don't even take an email address while creating accounts, and you can pay easily with Bitcoin or even with cash mailed to them. I'm not affiliated, just a very happy customer. Mullvad is also who Mozilla trusts for the Mozilla VPN [2]. You can sign up with that if you'd like Mozilla to get a cut. [1]: https://mullvad.net/ [2]: https://vpn.mozilla.org/

Using Bitcoin doesn’t make one anonymous. I would always send cash to them.

Re: NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

#180

Post by michaelmrose »

kelnos wrote: post #150
grishka wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use any commercial VPN service and expect privacy. Those are only good for bypassing geographical restrictions. If you want privacy, buy a VDS and host your own VPN server. It'll cost about the same, and you can use it for other things at no additional cost.

Seems like it'd be easier to "unmask" someone's VPS account than figure out who someone is when they use a paid VPN service. If you're worried about a government, your personal info from a VPS provider is just one court order away. If you use a VPN service that actually is serious about not keeping PII or logs, you might fare better there (they might be coerced to log future traffic of yours, but at least your prior…

Every form of security has different threat models and appropriate countermeasures.

If you are trying to avoid your ISP knowing you are downloading movies a VPN is a good solution.

If you don't want others in the coffeeshop to be able to snoop on remaining unencrypted http traffic. VPN

If you don't want your employer to have a list of your web traffic from your personal device. VPN

If you don't want a service which you don't pay with a credit card to have a way to connect your pseudonym to your real name. VPN

If you want to opt out of some degree of dragnet surveillance/data collection via parties like your ISP. VPN

None of these are incredibly uncommon. VPSs work great for most scenarios. If your actions are dangerous to your continued existence or you need to keep your own government from watching you then you probably need to adopt far more stringent measures but I feel this is vastly less common than the above situations.

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