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We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

mullvad.net

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Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#281

Post by ipaddr »

dcow wrote: post #156
CodeBeater wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how does VPNs break the internet? The only angle I can immediately see is the shortage of IPV4s.

They break the practical solutions to content distribution and delivery that we've deployed. If everyone used a VPN, CDNs and caching would be rendered ineffective. Generally, VPN consumers use more bandwidth than necessary to acquire the same content which does impact the network.

Don't use a VPN to promote CDN usage to save the global network some bandwidth?

Just turn off javascript and/or images.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#282

Post by roblabla »

tomnipotent wrote: post #262
wpietri wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be willing to say that subscriptions are a dark pattern when they don't automatically stop if you stop using them. A fundamental part of healthy business relationships is value for value. E.g., you give me money, I give you a sandwich, you take the sandwich, eat it, and are happy with it. If you keep paying me for sandwiches but I don't give them to you, that's not healthy. Ditto if I put them on the counter but…

What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.

And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#283

Post by contravariant »

capableweb wrote: post #186
contravariant wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the exact reasoning behind that? How does paying via paypall impact the privacy of a forwarded port? Is this something to do with state-level actors?

Presumably there are details linking together payments coming from Paypal and the account number. And obviously there is a link between account number and forwarded port. So following with that, you'd be able to make the connection between the account number and Paypal account, which is definitely not private nor even pretending to protect your privacy.

Maybe but doesn't all of that apply equally to just about any payment method other than sending them cash anonymously?

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#284

Post by Dylan16807 »

dcow wrote: post #156
CodeBeater wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, how does VPNs break the internet? The only angle I can immediately see is the shortage of IPV4s.

They break the practical solutions to content distribution and delivery that we've deployed. If everyone used a VPN, CDNs and caching would be rendered ineffective. Generally, VPN consumers use more bandwidth than necessary to acquire the same content which does impact the network.

Same bandwidth over my local connection, mildly more across backbone connections, not a big deal in total.

I feel like if the bandwidth used by content distribution really mattered, we'd see a lot more effort being put into multicasting. Even a basic stateless "multiple destination IPs" version could save so much bandwidth.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#285

Post by tomnipotent »

roblabla wrote: post #282
tomnipotent wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.

And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.

> And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service

All of them, from the local gym to Dropbox to Spotify. Subscription businesses can't make money if every consumer costs more to service than the revenue they generate. There's even an official accounting term for it, breakage.

> Produce nothing, but get paid every month

Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#286

Post by throwaway675309 »

criddell wrote: post #57
kombucha13 wrote: post #2

Very interesting. Mullvad seems to be the most extreme and reputable VPN service out there when it comes to privacy. At least it seems that way.

A VPN will hide you from your ISP, but that's about it, isn't it? Does a VPN really provide that much real privacy?

We've had numerous cases of ISPs spying on the domains that you are using and throttling your network usage according to that activity at least in the United States, so a VPN goes a long way towards ameliorating this particular issue.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#287

Post by pastacacioepepe »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #74
ezfe wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes and no. For most people, they're over-rated. You don't even need a VPN to securely pay your credit card bill on public Wi-Fi. However, there are two cases where they are useful: - IP address hiding (something like iCloud Private Relay for iOS/Mac users does this at the browser level, VPN brings it to the entire system) - Legal protections - Location simulation If you want to hide your IP address, this could…

You forgot the most important use case, unless you're talking about Europeans and USians only. I use a VPN simply because half the internet doesn't work without it (some guy in a suit decided what you can and cannot read, and there's nothing you can do about it). Free tiers provided by various "cloud" services work fine for this one (Oracle is the most generous among them).

> unless you're talking about Europeans and USians only

Nah. As Europeans we're getting more and more censorship. Just think that most Russian news outlets have been blocked, youtube channels and so on. Plus until recently I couldn't read a good chunk of US news due to them refusing to adapt to GDPR.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#288

Post by hunter2_ »

AnssiH wrote: post #244
hunter2_ wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the US and I'm not familiar with banking elsewhere, but the "bill pay" feature I'm talking about will try some electronic system first, and if the recipient doesn't support it, the bank simply mails a check. The recipient could be as small/offline as any person at a residential address. I assume writing a check and mailing it is a fairly typical thing everywhere, and having the bank do this on a repeating sche…

> I assume writing a check and mailing it is a fairly typical thing everywhere It absolutely is not. The only time I've seen a check was a gift from my grandfather in the 00s, and I don't think paying bills by mailing checks was ever a thing here. Checks also often become very difficult and expensive to cash when going cross-border. E.g. most banks here (Finland) refuse to cash foreign checks altogether.

So if you wanted to give money to another individual (not a company which offers card payments) and you didn't want to use the internet, is cash the only option?

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#289

Post by wpietri »

tomnipotent wrote: post #262
wpietri wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be willing to say that subscriptions are a dark pattern when they don't automatically stop if you stop using them. A fundamental part of healthy business relationships is value for value. E.g., you give me money, I give you a sandwich, you take the sandwich, eat it, and are happy with it. If you keep paying me for sandwiches but I don't give them to you, that's not healthy. Ditto if I put them on the counter but…

What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.

For anybody who offers a month-to-month subscription, I'm not asking for anything other than them not taking money they're not earning. You have a point with, say, annual subscriptions. But for services where there's no cost to the vendor for an unused subscription, maybe that's ok, as there an annual subscription could much more easily be a dark pattern.

I also think pushing the risk of "the customer doesn't actually get anything out of it" onto the business is where the risk should be. Who better to understand and manage that risk than the people making the product and who have great masses of data on how it actually gets used?

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#290

Post by wpietri »

tomnipotent wrote: post #285
roblabla wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.

> And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service All of them, from the local gym to Dropbox to Spotify. Subscription businesses can't make money if every consumer costs more to service than the revenue they generate. There's even an official accounting term for it, breakage. > Produce nothing, but get paid every month Failure to consume and get value from a subscript…

I am amazed that you can't see that approach as exploitative, and that your last line is victim blaming.

If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist.

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