Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought it doesn't matter if it is known you bought Moreno. When you spend it, that spend can't be traced back to you? Wasn't that the whole point of Moreno?
But if India makes it illegal to obtain monero, then you won't get to that second step of getting to use it. Controlling the on-ramps seems to be the easiest way to regulate crypto, as we saw when Canada started cracking down back in February
Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
221–230 of 246 posts
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if India makes it illegal to obtain monero, then you won't get to that second step of getting to use it. Controlling the on-ramps seems to be the easiest way to regulate crypto, as we saw when Canada started cracking down back in February
Sure. But is purchasing Moreno actually blocked anywhere with a kyc compliant on ramp?
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#223Earlier 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…
Its a put up or shutup kinda system. Fund your wallet with $100, hold it, and we will let you post that reaction to a news article after its been held continiusly for 30 days, and automatically delete is as soon as its unfunded.
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#225For 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...
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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. That's not the only deciding factor though, is it? Mullvad (not singling them out, but just for sake of illustration) is in many ways is more attractive to bad actors because it centralizes users seeking privacy. On top of that, you're adding additional software and network com…
The trade-off is worth it, for me personally, including when those other factors are considered.
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#227It's always interesting to see how often stuff that Mullvad does ends up on HN, even when it's not something new. There are other VPNs out there that were accepting Monero for a long time.
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you aren't a criminal, the fact is that privacy tools of this nature are explicitly relying on having enough volume of criminals and other illicit users to provide cover for you. This is what they're designed to do, the designers of these systems will openly admit to it. You can make your own judgement on whether you're ok with that, but it doesn't help to deny what's actually happening.
>the fact is that privacy tools of this nature are explicitly relying on having enough volume of criminals and other illicit users to provide cover for you No, that's not how this works. You don't need criminal activity to provide you with anonymity. You just need ANY other activity in order to get lost in the crowd[1]. Your flawed view is that nobody should have privacy because some bad guys might use privacy to do…
And that's irrelevant because these tools are explicitly built for criminals to use them. I'm actually quoting what the designers of these systems have said, this isn't my opinion. When you say "ANY other activity" that also means criminal activity gets lumped in there, I don't know why you're denying this. You're probably not a criminal but if you're using this then you're intentionally making criminals your company and you will pay for the effects of that in one way or another. That's the part where I'm speaking to you from experience. You just can't make an anonymized system like this that also isn't a lucrative target for criminals, such a thing doesn't exist. Is it unfortunate for those who aren't criminals and actually need privacy? Absolutely, but this is the reality of the situation. There's no easy solution. If someone is telling you that this isn't an issue then they're just lying to you, get mad at them instead of me.
>Your flawed view is that nobody should have privacy because some bad guys might use privacy to do bad things.
No, this also isn't even remotely close to what my actual view is. You just blatantly made this up for no reason. Why are you doing this?
This is yet another reason that it's so exhausting to talk about this, not only are you spreading misinformation about this project but you're also spreading misinformation about me. Misinformation and disinformation is actually incredibly common in these low-trust environments. If you think it's bad, I agree, it's actually incredibly shameful that some people try to use "privacy" as a cover to spread misinformation, but that's something else that you have to accept and deal with and insulate yourself from if you take this route. Please do a better job in the future and don't bring yourself down to this level of empty rhetoric. You're letting the liars and criminals win.
If you're acting this way because you see this route as some kind of moral outlet, I would suggest that you stop and find another one. This one is ethically gray and if you stick with it, you'll be peer pressured into excusing a lot of things that you're probably not comfortable with in the name of "privacy" at the expense of everything else. The moral rationalizations coming from these projects are strong, but are ultimately willful blind spots informed by money-making and capitalism just like everything else. Don't say that nobody warned you.
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if you aren't a criminal, the fact is that privacy tools of this nature are explicitly relying on having enough volume of criminals and other illicit users to provide cover for you. This is what they're designed to do, the designers of these systems will openly admit to it. You can make your own judgement on whether you're ok with that, but it doesn't help to deny what's actually happening.
When only criminals care about privacy, privacy becomes criminal?
Re: Mullvad VPN now accepts Monero payments
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't meant to be criticism just curious. Why did it take so long to add monero support? For the past several years there's only ~2 other VPNs that tick all the privacy boxes, and you're the most preferable - other then lack of monero support. It always seemed weird that you went so far for privacy, but didn't support monero. Was it just on the backlog and took a bit of time to implement? I appreciate that you b…
> Why did it take so long to add monero support? Some third-parties did sell gift-codes using Monero before Mullvad had native support although I had no experience with them. > I've heard a rumor that you've shared a user IP because of a government subpoena (live during a connection, so it wasn't logged). Got any details? FWIW: Correlating the origin IP with real-time traffic out of a single-hop VPN tunnel can be don…
I do not - it's not an accusation, I have no evidence, just a rumor I was curious if they'd care to comment on.