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Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

mullvad.net

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Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#141

Post by drexlspivey »

throwaway4good wrote: post #137
tomxor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like mullvad's service too (wiregaurd)... My only issue is that is seems to have become increasingly difficult to access many websites through their servers. I suppose this is inevitable to some degree with any VPN service, it's part of the deal for more privacy, you have to share an IP with potential sources of abuse. But it seems to have gotten really bad recently to the point that I end up server hoping t…

"I'm not blaming Mullvad" - you should - this is a direct consequence of accepting customers that pay cash and wants to be completely anonymous. In the end they are going to drive their honest non-abusive customers elsewhere.

I have my own VPN on a digitalocean droplet and it’s basically the same, I’m outright blocked from many sites (Imgur for example) and I have to solve tons of captchas. DigitalOcean doesnt accept cash so your argument doesn’t pass the sniff test.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#142

Post by xanaxagoras »

tomxor wrote: post #54
seanw444 wrote: post #41

Thank you, Mullvad team! This is quite literally the only feature I've been wanting. Everything else works well. Bandwidth? Excellent. Apps? Excellent. WireGuard? Excellent. No form of KYC required, period? Excellent. Payment options? Excellent. I hope I don't live to see you turn into every other shady VPN service.

I really like mullvad's service too (wiregaurd)... My only issue is that is seems to have become increasingly difficult to access many websites through their servers. I suppose this is inevitable to some degree with any VPN service, it's part of the deal for more privacy, you have to share an IP with potential sources of abuse. But it seems to have gotten really bad recently to the point that I end up server hoping t…

I've had a lot of trouble with that lately. I can't connect to imgur without turning it off, and my USPS.com account got straight up banned for logging in over Mullvad, I had to call them to prove my identity.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#143

Post by throwaway4good »

ziddoap wrote: post #126
throwaway4good wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can give me a single legitimate use case for a VPN with no KYC paid via Monero.

You said there was no practical application for VPNs or Monero, but now you're shifting your goal posts? I think I have wasted enough brain cycles on this.

It was always and - you can use a vpn for watching foreign tv - cheers!

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#145

Post by 5678909787 »

searchableguy wrote: post #9
atypeoferror wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how they plan to impose compliance on entities that have no legal presence in India, accept cryptocurrency payments, and take no PII as part of the signup process - all of which I believe apply to Mullvad.

They are gonna ban self custodial wallet which are rare in India anyway. So exchange will monitor and KYC anyone you transfer crypto coins to. Impose a penalty on the citizen side as well.

How could they possibly enforce that? Is there any government in the world that's currently able to enforce such laws?

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#146

Post by shrimp_emoji »

stanmancan wrote: post #107
lordofgibbons wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

If you looked at 'average people' versus 'criminals' you'll find that there's a much higher demand for privacy/anonymous communication among the criminals. That isn't to say that normal folk don't want privacy too. The end result is that if you're one of few company that offer privacy to your customers you'll find your customer base has a higher ratio of criminals as they'll all flock to you.

I think criminalizing useful technologies is an obscenely naive way to operate. You're incurring insane game theoretical cost for the consolation of revenge against the criminals.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#147

Post by vorpalhex »

stavros wrote: post #117
_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.

What kind of abuse could I be subjected to if I accept Monero? Seems like the most that could happen is that people can send me money.

1. Accept kickbacks from

2. Buy your product with kickbacks

3. Resell your product at a discount for clean money

Congrats, you now get to meet all the alphabet people in person and spend a lot of one on one time with them. Hope you didn't have any traveling planned cuz you aren't getting on any airplanes.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#148

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

seanw444 wrote: post #43
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #34

As a Mullvad fan this makes me very nervous. If they begin being used by, and taking payment from criminals it's going to bring a lot of extra heat their way.

They've been requiring zero identification from the beginning. That's been their business model. They don't know if you're a criminal, or a law-abiding citizen. And they intended it that way. That's how it should be.

It hasn't been possible at scale until now though. I think they're opening floodgates. I hope I'm wrong.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#149

Post by jcrawfordor »

drexlspivey wrote: post #141
throwaway4good wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm not blaming Mullvad" - you should - this is a direct consequence of accepting customers that pay cash and wants to be completely anonymous. In the end they are going to drive their honest non-abusive customers elsewhere.

I have my own VPN on a digitalocean droplet and it’s basically the same, I’m outright blocked from many sites (Imgur for example) and I have to solve tons of captchas. DigitalOcean doesnt accept cash so your argument doesn’t pass the sniff test.

DO has a generally poor reputation in the security industry as abuse from their services is very common - they don't really vet their customers to any real degree. The same is true of e.g. AWS which is why a lot of websites will outright block traffic coming from AWS.

The reality is that "anonymous payment" is kind of pointless, it's basically never the payment method that determines abuse potential as abusers have all kinds of ways of making payment anonymously even when only e.g. cc is accepted. What matters is the level of time and effort put into monitoring usage.

To be honest, on a pure sniff test your traffic coming from DO is probably more suspicious. There are lots of legitimate uses of commercial VPNs. There are not many legitimate users of consumer web-browsing from DO.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#150

Post by zucker42 »

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…

There's significantly more competition among VPNs than there are among ISPs in any given area, so it should be no surprise that some VPNs are more trusted than ISPs. Most people have only a few choices for their ISP, and maybe only one that offers the features they require (for example, only one ISP in my area offers high enough upload speeds to reasonable backup my computers). In many cases people don't have a choice of ISP that will keep their data private.

Therefore, you are trading trusting your ISP for trusting your VPN, but at least you are getting someone who says they care about your privacy (rather than someone who has a track record of not caring) and someone who would face significant business repercussions if they became untrusted, rather than someone that would face almost no business repercussions.

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