Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NordVPN disables features when you turn off auto-renew

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 238 posts

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

#211

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

lr4444lr wrote: post #95
tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) people believing long-outdated guidance about not using open WiFi networks without a VPN 2) protecting your browsing traffic from being observed by your ISP (where you may not have much choice), at the risk of it being observed by the VPN company (which you trust). 3) Torrenting without having to worry about fines, nastygrams and other annoyances 4) Bypassing geoblocking 1 + 2 is what the VPNs advertise, but I thi…

What's wrong about (1)? Https or not, there are still MitM attacks, and the URLs you are accessing are still trackable. As to why I'd trust my VPN more than my ISP, who's CEO has got more to lose once word gets out that his company cooperated with authorities to turn over my logs?

More or less everything your computer does online is protected through HTTPS or similar protocols, with proper certificate checking to protect against MitM attacks. By now, enough time has passed to get most incompetent vendors who had auto updaters doing insufficient checking to fix their software.

As someone else pointed out, URLs are not trackable, host names are, but the advice often comes in the form of "don't do sensitive stuff like online banking from untrusted networks". Since especially this has had HTTPS for 10+ years now, this advice is far outdated.

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

#212

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Aldipower wrote: post #72
cube2222 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything is over https now, and with it, the wifi network security doesn't matter much.

Wifi isn't only browsing the web..

No, but HTTPS isn't only browsing the web either. Very little that the average person will do on the go doesn't use TLS (or other effective encryption) in some form.

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

#213

Post by Wowfunhappy »

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/

The thing is, it costs >$5 per month. I pay $2 for NordVPN.

I'm not expecting privacy, I just want a way to occasionally geo-hop to other countries, for streaming video and to test if a problem is related to my IP/location or not. And occasionally to have some minimal level of protection in a coffee shop.

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

#214

Post by prigadita »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #213
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/

The thing is, it costs >$5 per month. I pay $2 for NordVPN. I'm not expecting privacy, I just want a way to occasionally geo-hop to other countries, for streaming video and to test if a problem is related to my IP/location or not. And occasionally to have some minimal level of protection in a coffee shop.

Ah great, we will all adapt to your use case and let nordvpn charge us for things they don't deliver unless we auto renew, since you are doing great!

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

#215

Post by Wowfunhappy »

prigadita wrote: post #214
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, it costs >$5 per month. I pay $2 for NordVPN. I'm not expecting privacy, I just want a way to occasionally geo-hop to other countries, for streaming video and to test if a problem is related to my IP/location or not. And occasionally to have some minimal level of protection in a coffee shop.

Ah great, we will all adapt to your use case and let nordvpn charge us for things they don't deliver unless we auto renew, since you are doing great!

I actually have auto-renew turned off fwiw. But I didn’t mean to disparage people who use other services.

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

#216

Post by notRobot »

hda111 wrote: post #179
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.

Actually, it definitely can, if used right

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

#217

Post by vmception »

boring_twenties wrote: post #191
vmception wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When xmr.to existed, sure. Not anymore.

Morphtoken, been using them for years on and off, not vouching for them, hope it works out

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

#218

Post by vmception »

StavrosK wrote: post #196
boring_twenties wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current BTC fee seems to be just over $1, not $20. I don't think MorphToken would work because as far as I can tell, they have no way to set a fixed amount of the destination currency. Other providers like ChangeNOW do offer that but they have much higher minimums, something like .003 BTC, which is obviously not useful for a $5 payment.

> Current BTC fee seems to be just over $1, not $20. Really? My Ledger app says 112 sat/byte, which comes out to $8 for me, and I'm pretty sure they were higher a few weeks ago, when I checked. Am I way overpaying? > I don't think MorphToken would work because as far as I can tell, they have no way to set a fixed amount of the destination currency. That's too bad, XMR.to was really useful for this...

set your own transaction fee. if you aren't in a rush then set a much much lower one

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

#219

Post by moonchild »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #203
moonchild wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're serious , you use tor. If just you want to torrent the last season of game of thrones (why would you?) then a reasonably reputable no-log vpn service will probably do a perfectly fine job. If you want to access non-https websites from coffee shops, buy a $5/mo vps from amazon/prgmr/digitalocean/whomever and tunnel through it. I don't see a situation in which the dedicated colocated hardware is the right cho…

I find tor is usually just fine for coffee shop browsing. I went to a couple that blocked it someway or other though. Most are no issue.

Yes but tor is slow, making it slightly less practical than the tunnel through the VPS. It also doesn't hide your traffic from the exit nodes, who may be less trustworthy than a VPS provider if you are doing strictly legal things.

(On the other hand, if you want to perform a public service, using tor is a good way of masking the traffic of people who actually want to use it to disseminate sensitive information.)

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

#220

Post by noisy_boy »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #14
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/

Great Linux client, too!

Thanks this was the question in my mind. I use expressvpn which works fine but with the good feedback about mullvad here, want to check them out.
Post reply on HN