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

Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

mullvad.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 246 posts

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#191

Post by Forbo »

throwaway4good wrote: post #113
ziddoap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want me to sit here and list out all of the applicable and legal use-cases for VPNs and Monero? How many would I have to list for you to change your views? Is there even a number, or is your mind set that VPN = criminal?

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

Maybe I'm sick of surveillance capitalism at every fucking turn? Why do I need to justify my right to privacy? I'm absolutely over mega corporations trying to build psychological profiles of me to determine how to best try to manipulate me into giving them money. Or perhaps I don't trust them to keep the information they gather securely, properly protecting it from becoming part of the next big data breach. That's not even taking into account them turning around and selling it to the highest bidder. Every payment processor has turned dataminer. I'm sick of it. The more places I can use Monero, the better.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#192

Post by opportune »

0des wrote: post #14

Its too bad monero research lab seems to be slowing down and disbanding. Devs have to eat and all, but I wonder sometimes if a longer and slower emission curve would have helped here. Monero is mostly emitted at this point. For a project that means so much to the world and still has much work to do, its a shame how things turned out with MRL.

More people need to put up bounties for feature development. There are some existing sites but they’re not heavily used. I think plenty of people would be happy to develop a feature for 5/6 figures.

There are also some monero whales that could probably stand to contribute to further development even if they don’t do it themselves (like fluffy pony) but unfortunately it looks like they are/he is in the early stages of getting Assanged

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#193

Post by easrng »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #182
0daystock wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradoxically, the most trustworthy thing you could do as a VPN provider is explain why most people don't need and won't actually benefit from a VPN. Outside of a few limited use cases (accessing location-restricted content, connecting to legacy services) and with almost-ubiquitous end-to-end TLS encryption deployed on the Internet, there's really not a lot of good reasons to use a VPN (and many good reasons not to).…

DNS queries are still leaked (from most users) regardless of end-to-end TLS. There is of course DNSSEC and DNS over HTTPS, but those are not used by the majority. Another use case you missed is downloading/uploading pirated/copywrited content. Good VPNs receive DMCA notices and throw them in the garbage. You are right that VPNs are not useful for many use cases and they can give users a false sense of security.

DNSSEC doesn't help privacy, it helps security.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#194

Post by opportune »

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.

I don’t think there is much of any risk of accepting it except that you may not be able to comply with KYC.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#195

Post by opportune »

password4321 wrote: post #176

What is the minimum viable effort required to receive Monero?

It depends on how security conscious you are. Technically you can route things through remote nodes and thus avoid downloading the blockchain. But the monero community is security conscious and usually recommends downloading the blockchain, which takes a while if you do it the “right” way and don’t just find a copy of it hosted somewhere and download it.

If you are ok with skipping that, you can use something like CakeWallet to create a wallet on your phone and then give someone a receiving address

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#196

Post by tiluha »

password4321 wrote: post #176

What is the minimum viable effort required to receive Monero?

To just receive: download the wallet software from getmonero.org and generate a new wallet. The are also multiple point of sale solutions available.

To automate payments: run a node and use any of the RPC libraries available for various languages.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#197

Post by 0des »

tiluha wrote: post #189
hereme888 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monero is about to go through a hard fork and significant upgrades, like trading XMR to BTC and back without a centralized exchange. The mining rewards was recently voted to a specific amount for perpetuity, to guarantee it never going to zero. I think the project is going quite well.

The mining reward schedule has not been changed since monero was started. The tail emission was alays part of the protocol.

I'm not sure if that is entirely true, historically, I can explain..

The emission schedule was changed when the tail emission was added, however that was early on, to your credit. Smooth was the one who proposed it iirc, then it was added shortly after. It was not part of Bitmonero originally, as Smooth, Fluffyponyza, et al did not arrive until ThankfulForToday abandoned the project.

Maybe someone with less gray in the beard can put some dates on that, I'm just going by memory.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#198

Post by [deleted] »

opportune wrote: post #192
0des wrote: post #14

Its too bad monero research lab seems to be slowing down and disbanding. Devs have to eat and all, but I wonder sometimes if a longer and slower emission curve would have helped here. Monero is mostly emitted at this point. For a project that means so much to the world and still has much work to do, its a shame how things turned out with MRL.

More people need to put up bounties for feature development. There are some existing sites but they’re not heavily used. I think plenty of people would be happy to develop a feature for 5/6 figures. There are also some monero whales that could probably stand to contribute to further development even if they don’t do it themselves (like fluffy pony) but unfortunately it looks like they are/he is in the early stages of…

[deleted]

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#199

Post by __turbobrew__ »

easrng wrote: post #193
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS queries are still leaked (from most users) regardless of end-to-end TLS. There is of course DNSSEC and DNS over HTTPS, but those are not used by the majority. Another use case you missed is downloading/uploading pirated/copywrited content. Good VPNs receive DMCA notices and throw them in the garbage. You are right that VPNs are not useful for many use cases and they can give users a false sense of security.

DNSSEC doesn't help privacy, it helps security.

Yes you are right. I meant DNSCRYPT.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#200

Post by jacooper »

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…

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN