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Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

mullvad.net

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Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#201

Post by jacooper »

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.

I think this is different. You are banned because DO IP ranges are public and everyone wants to ban cloud IPs, since legit users don't use static VPS IPs.

I am currently hosting head scale with an exit node on hetzner, and sometimes i am banned from websites.

But back when I used contabo it was a rareity to get blocked, even though its a more "shady" host, maybe because its not as well known ?

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#202

Post by _8j50 »

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 meant as a business

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#204

Post by bawolff »

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.

True, but as far as cloudflare goes - it doesn't explain why plain, probably cached, GET requests have to be behind a captcha. If that's really an issue, can't they save it for POST requests and other non-static endpoints.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#205

Post by bawolff »

idiotsecant wrote: post #155
brightball wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hundre…

I always thought the blacklistable credentials was a cool approach - we're you prove you control an ip but dont reveal it. https://www.cypherpunks.ca/~iang/pubs/blacronym-wpes.pdf

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#206

Post by nl »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #116
nuclx wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yet you can't watch age restricted youtube videos without giving them your ID or credit card information. In the name of "protecting children". The German government also threatened to ban Telegram which would have put them in line with places like China, Russia, Cuba and Iran. I think Telegram folded and now removes channels at their request in order to avoid being fully censored.

None of this is relevant to the point that ISPs have more privacy protection in Germany than elsewhere.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#207

Post by woojoo666 »

dotnet00 wrote: post #57
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.

Monero users are more likely to be the type to use a cold wallet, and a ban on cold wallets is unenforceable (especially for Monero, where transactions can't be traced) as it's kind of like holding cash, except that there isn't anything to be found physically.

The hard part is getting the monero in the first place to put in your cold wallet. The main two options are (1) use an exchange, all of which are either being monitors or blacklisted by india (2) exchange cash in person, good luck doing that in a country that is actively suppressing it

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#208

Post by Dylan16807 »

qw3rty01 wrote: post #162
nonrandomstring wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not specifically picking on you (thanks for replying) but may I rephrase that a little and then ask something; "Sinners look just like saints, so it's necessary to punish all, to destroy the riches of the many in order that wicked few do not escape." Is that a fair framing of the "ethics" of what you said? (I'm not attributing that as 'your' argument, I understand you're kinda just trying to 'explain' something as yo…

No, because you're framing it like they're blocking or challenging every user that comes to their site. Instead, when 90% of your malicious traffic comes from VPNs/TOR, it makes way more sense to just block or challenge those specifically even if it causes an inconvenience on the ones who use those services in a non-malicious way.

> block or challenge

A reasonable challenge would probably be fine. But so many sites block, or sometimes use obnoxious unfair challenges.

Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments

#209

Post by charcircuit »

handsclean wrote: post #179
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…

The way I see it, websites like that are saying they’ll only do it without a condom. You want it real bad, so it’s tempting to try to bargain about it, or maybe just take it off for now - it’s just a little while, what’re the chances it goes wrong? - but we all know that the smart move is to keep it on or back out entirely. Reasonable partners, of which there are many, understand and cooperate. And ones that don’t ar…

The vast majority of sites just want to reduce abuse of their site or services. They aren't trying to trick you into doxxing yourself.
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