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Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

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Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#151

Post by brightball »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #69
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…

> My only issue is that is seems to have become increasingly difficult to access many websites through their servers. Welcome to the world of Tor users. People who value online dignity need to work together against privacy hostile web technologies. My present bugbear is Cloudflare, who seem to do a lot to disrupt privacy respecting technologies. Ultimately though, the power lies with web service designers. One can no…

Yea problem from an admin perspective is that all malicious traffic attempts to use privacy respecting technology. It’s more guilt by association than anything else for the legitimate users.

One of the weird realities is that in order to combat fraud you need to be able to identify the source, which is a hard reality as a privacy advocate.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#152

Post by neither_color »

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.

Not really, this happens with any VPN service to the point that if VPN providers were more honest this is what they would tell people:

Online stores are more likely to flag your purchase as suspicious on the admin side(e.g the Shopify console)

You will run into captchas and prompts for authentication more often

You may not be able to log into some of your more sensitive services(like banking)

Streaming sites will block your server eventually

Even if you spin your own wireguard instance on any major cloud provider you're going to run into the same issues.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#153

Post by tomxor »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #110
tomxor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do this, and it's nice having your own IP, however keep in mind that while you preserve privacy from your ISP/gov you lose privacy from the websites and services you access as you become very uniquely identifiable.

Yeah I'm less worried about trackers (block those with uOrigin and AdGuard), and just more worried about data leaks on public wifi which are less and less likely with everything being on SSL now, but until everything is FORCED onto SSL then I will still run my own VPN when I'm on public.

Note that those are client side. Nothing can stop a server from seeing your IP.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#154

Post by judge2020 »

neither_color wrote: post #152
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.

Not really, this happens with any VPN service to the point that if VPN providers were more honest this is what they would tell people: Online stores are more likely to flag your purchase as suspicious on the admin side(e.g the Shopify console) You will run into captchas and prompts for authentication more often You may not be able to log into some of your more sensitive services(like banking) Streaming sites will blo…

> Online stores are more likely to flag your purchase as suspicious on the admin side(e.g the Shopify console)

I'm not sure a VPN provides much utility when you're already punching your (billing|shipping) address and CC number into a website - that is, unless you're using a drop site for your packages, which definitely will make you look like someone who has stolen CC digits and is trying to cash in on them.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#155

Post by idiotsecant »

brightball wrote: post #151
nonrandomstring wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My only issue is that is seems to have become increasingly difficult to access many websites through their servers. Welcome to the world of Tor users. People who value online dignity need to work together against privacy hostile web technologies. My present bugbear is Cloudflare, who seem to do a lot to disrupt privacy respecting technologies. Ultimately though, the power lies with web service designers. One can no…

Yea problem from an admin perspective is that all malicious traffic attempts to use privacy respecting technology. It’s more guilt by association than anything else for the legitimate users. One of the weird realities is that in order to combat fraud you need to be able to identify the source, which is a hard reality as a privacy advocate.

HN tends to be pretty micropayment / cryptobro averse (for good reason, mostly) but I think this is a problem that crypto could legitimately solve - Tie an anonymous 'identity' to a well-seasoned (unmoved for >x time, where x = days for some things or maybe years for some things) wallet with some reasonable amount of funding in it ($100 or something) and you become 'Guy who owns that hundred bucks'. Moving the hundred bucks unseasons it. The provider only respects your claim to be an individual if you can prove you've got a pile of 100 seasoned bucks. If you do something I don't like, I can ban that pile from further interaction. Malicious users would immediately move the money around, but at least the malicious actors would need a lot of piles of money constantly moving around and 'seasoning' to create a bunch of fake individual identities, which gets prohibitively expensive at scale for all but nation-state type actors which you're not going to be able to defend against anyway.

Bam - I am anonymous, but have (mostly) proven I am a real person with (mostly) reasonably good intentions.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#156

Post by judge2020 »

heipei wrote: post #136
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.

All that plus IPv6 support, which is still not that common among VPN providers.

On that note, is there a good consensus on IPv6 blocking? I know some ISPs provide a /48 while mine (AT&T) only provides a /64 to each customers. I would imagine most websites, when blocking a v6 for abuse, block the whole /64?

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#158

Post by JumpCrisscross »

5678909787 wrote: post #145
searchableguy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Is there any government in the world that's currently able to enforce such laws?

People talk about crypto like offshore bank accounts and cash never existed.

How does the revolutionary leader of a Sub-Saharan country who suspects the deposed leader has funds in an offshore bank account in a jurisdiction that doesn't even recognize the incoming regime get the money? Violence.

In hyper-legalistic societies like the U.S., yes, the police may sometimes have trouble finding proof that survives court scrutiny. (Though I'd guess most people aren't practicing good opsec around their crypto.) But that isn't most of the world. I don't see the Indian police having any trouble arresting and searching someone on reasonable suspicion of operating a hidden wallet.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#160

Post by csande17 »

praveenhm wrote: post #157

I am mozilla VPN, which uses Mullvad, is there any disadvantage using Mozilla over directly using Mullvad?

If you use Mozilla's VPN, you have to trust that they won't backdoor their VPN client in order to serve their public policy goals. (Mozilla has taken a lot of public stances against things like "disinformation" and "harassment", which could theoretically motivate them to unmask the hateful trolls who use VPN services!)
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