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Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

mullvad.net

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Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#91

Post by dotnet00 »

nuclx wrote: post #72

What are people using VPNs for mostly, if they're living in a country without internet censorship? It's either your ISP or the VPN provider, which can log the websites you have visited, so there isn't a clear advantage of using a VPN. Sure the VPN provider may claim to log nothing, but that's hard to confirm and not proven to be true in some cases (related thread regarding Protonmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

ISPs are often in a more powerful position, in the sense that they often have more streams of data to you than just your internet usage. E.g. your mobile service provider is also your ISP when you're on the go, thus they also have your call and text history and location history to correlate with your browsing history.

On top of that there's also the value of just having privacy even if the ISP can be trusted. E.g. I might not mind being seen naked by a friend, but I would still prefer for that to not happen.

In general I think a lot of the big providers who have gone without incidents (and without major changes) for a long time can be trusted. I feel the incidents with Proton were somewhat overblown, since their page on legal notices received did mention that they could be compelled to log IP addresses (or at least that's how I remembered it). But even without that, I think Mullvad has been pushing for "system transparency" where users can verify all the software that's running on their servers, which is a step in the right direction towards providing confidence that they are indeed not logging anything.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#92

Post by McDyver »

throwaway4good wrote: post #70
McDyver wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that mean that every user replying to this thread is a criminal and have no legitimate use to the VPN?

If you add paid with monero then probably yes.

OK, so using your logic, if you're wearing a balaklava to warm up your head, don't use cash. Will remember that

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#93

Post by throwaway4good »

Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM card for use straight away without any form of registration).

This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card.

This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe there were legislate uses too - I never found out.)

The problem for the telco was that this was generating hundred fold the number of request for wire tapping and logging by the courts and the police. And by law the telco was required to service these request free of charge.

So in the end the business simply wasn’t there even though the margins were sky high.

Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#94

Post by Etheryte »

throwaway4good wrote: post #93

Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM card for use straight away without any form of registration). This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card. This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe th…

Interesting story, but how does this relate to Mullvad accepting Monero payments?

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#95

Post by _8j50 »

Grimburger wrote: post #46
_8j50 wrote: post #19

I gotta say, I love Monero but every single time I see malware deploy a miner it is Monero for obvious reasons. More than any currency I want it to succeed because of true anonymity it provides but when you accept Monero, better beef up your anti-abuse capacity.

It feels wrong going in defending them here but basically nothing else on the planet is CPU mine-able anymore, RandomX was made specifically to exclude GPU's and ASIC's. If you had intrusions on GPU servers it would be a very different story.

I can't tell you why they compromise thousands of docker containers,vms and even run of the mill malware drops xmr miners with winring0.sys on windows to run at ring0

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#96

Post by _8j50 »

Kiro wrote: post #90
_8j50 wrote: post #19

I gotta say, I love Monero but every single time I see malware deploy a miner it is Monero for obvious reasons. More than any currency I want it to succeed because of true anonymity it provides but when you accept Monero, better beef up your anti-abuse capacity.

> for obvious reasons You might think it's because it's private and confidential but it's actually because it's suited for CPU mining.

Either way it is very difficult to find the owner of an XMR "wallet"

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#97

Post by nuclx »

ziddoap wrote: post #80
nuclx wrote: post #72

What are people using VPNs for mostly, if they're living in a country without internet censorship? It's either your ISP or the VPN provider, which can log the websites you have visited, so there isn't a clear advantage of using a VPN. Sure the VPN provider may claim to log nothing, but that's hard to confirm and not proven to be true in some cases (related thread regarding Protonmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

> It's either your ISP or the VPN provider That answers it for many people, I would guess. Even without censorship, many ISPs have a much worse track-record for gathering and subsequently selling information than, say, Mullvad does. Is it an absolute that Mullvad doesn't log/sell information? No, of course not. But they make a much more convincing case than my ISP does. Geoblock avoiding is another common answer. My…

Here in Germany the rights of ISP users are supposedly better protected than in other jurisdictions. At least that's what I heard on this podcast [0], latest episode iirc.

[0] https://www.stitcher.com/show/cypherpunk-bitstream

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#98

Post by FollowingTheDao »

tintedfireglass wrote: post #47
searchableguy wrote: post #4

For Indians, mullvad and others will not be available soon. New order require mandatory logging and storage of customer details for 5 years for digital infra providers post June. https://entrackr.com/2022/04/it-ministry-orders-vpn-provider...

What? Why have I never heard of it? Useless news outlets never talk about the important things :/ No one is opposing this? Why?!

> Useless news outlets never talk about the important things

It's a feature, not a bug.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#99

Post by flatiron »

leodriesch wrote: post #75
nuclx wrote: post #72

What are people using VPNs for mostly, if they're living in a country without internet censorship? It's either your ISP or the VPN provider, which can log the websites you have visited, so there isn't a clear advantage of using a VPN. Sure the VPN provider may claim to log nothing, but that's hard to confirm and not proven to be true in some cases (related thread regarding Protonmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

Torrenting comes to mind. Also if you trust the VPN provider more than your ISP or VPN provider has essentially no PII of you (in case of Mullvad).

This is what I use mine for. If PIA is secretly logging they aren’t going to reveal that info and ruin their business model for whatever you call a DMCA request in Canada regarding my torrent activities.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#100

Post by lordofgibbons »

throwaway4good wrote: post #93

Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM card for use straight away without any form of registration). This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card. This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe th…

>Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble.

Interesting that you think only criminals want privacy. I use Signal and TLS too, I must be Pablo Escobar's second coming?

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