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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

#391

Post by nottorp »

fidelramos wrote: post #377
anonporridge wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool story. Doesn't scale. Layer up.

Bitcoin Cash does currently scale up to Paypal's daily number of transactions while keeping transaction fees below $0.01. [0] Scalability tests are underway [1] to detect bottlenecks for increasing the block size further, which should take it closer to Visa's transaction capacity. The scalability roadmap aims for eventually supporting 50 daily transactions for each human in the planet, again keeping fees low, which i…

> Bitcoin Cash does currently scale up to Paypal's daily number of transactions while keeping transaction fees below $0.01.

On this here website there was a talk a couple months ago that led me to believe that paying $150 worth of bitcoin costs ... $150 if you want it done at credit card speed. Have things changed?

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#392

Post by n80g532n0i »

sph wrote: post #218
rglover wrote: post #27

Wow. Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this, figured I'd give it a try. That is hands down the BEST onboarding experience for an app (let alone a VPN) I've had in I don't know how long. Took me maybe 2 minutes to go from no account to a working VPN connection. I love that everything is anonymous (down to the account credentials just being a randomly generated token).

Of all their features, I love that they have an Android TV app so I can watch F1TV on my couch. They're worth more than the 5 euros I give them per month.

Interestingly I tried to watch HBO Max (from a different country) using Mullvad but it failed me. While some other VPN providers succeeded. So it seems it's kind of a hit and miss what works.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#393

Post by Ajedi32 »

bearmode wrote: post #380
anonporridge wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also easily pay with better anonymity with the Strike app, https://strike.me , which abstracts bitcoin mainnet and lightning network payments behind USD, so you don't have to worry about actually holding bitcoin or managing tax implications. You just use bitcoin as a globally agnostic payment rail, masked with your local fiat, so the price volatility doesn't affect you. Mullvad even gives you a 10% discount f…

You can literally just mail them cash if you want absolute anonymity.

Even with that though you'd still have to worry about them identifying you by your IP address. Are there any other VPN providers which support anonymous payments? It occurs to me that you could get some pretty decent anonymity by stringing two or three independent VPNs together, Tor-style, while avoiding many of the performance issues associated with Tor.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#394

Post by hunter2_ »

usr1106 wrote: post #359
dannyw wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You call your bank, or go into a branch, and transfer it to their bank account.

You fill-in in a bank transfer form and mail it to your bank (if you don't carry it in person to a branch office). The money gets transferred from the account of the receiver to the account of the recipient within a day. That's a standardized service every bank has to offer in the SEPA area and the price must be same regardless where the recipient's account is. No difference whether business or individual on either e…

Frankly, this sounds like a long-winded way of saying "you write a check," with a technical difference being that the transaction is a push from the sender rather than a pull from the recipient. If this form has an option for recurring on a (e.g.) monthly basis, then it's what Mullvad could suggest subscribers switch to, if both parties have a SEPA presence.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#395

Post by wpietri »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #318
wpietri wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist. Sure, but this doesn't describe all subscription businesses, plenty of companies have healthy margins even with active users. No one is saying there aren't subscription businesses that abuse subscription pricing to get recurring revenue from what should be one-time revenue, leave customers…

Sure, and nowhere did I say I wanted to ban subscriptions, leases, and the like. I'm just saying that for online subscriptions, society should reduce the incentives to exploit people by requiring subscriptions to auto-suspend when they're not actually used.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#396

Post by wpietri »

nobody9999 wrote: post #353
wpietri wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the old "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" routine. Not a good sign, but I'll take one more swing at it. An all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers don't eat anything and you still keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative. For something like an apartment, there's reasonable justification for long-term contracts and continuing to charge people without reg…

>People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites, but quite a lot of them are just scammers, grifters, and frauds. Which is exactly why a law would be especially valuable here, so that their time and attention were devoted to some socially positive activity. Does that also apply to your car/home/health insurance as well? If you don't have an accident/get robbed/go to the doctor, are you b…

It of course does not apply, because you're getting risk-mitigation value every month. (If you don't think so, feel free to drop the insurance.)

That said, those are prime opportunities for parasitism and exploitation, because it's hard to measure risk reduction until actual harm comes along. That's why those sectors need heavy regulation.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#397

Post by wpietri »

tomnipotent wrote: post #320
wpietri wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the old "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" routine. Not a good sign, but I'll take one more swing at it. An all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers don't eat anything and you still keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative. For something like an apartment, there's reasonable justification for long-term contracts and continuing to charge people without reg…

If you eat a buffet and only have one plate, you don't get to complain and ask for a refund. > keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative. When is it the customer's fault for not cancelling? You're working very hard to avoid responsibility for the business contract you entered into. > they stop experiencing marginal costs for me. Which are a small part of the overall cost struct…

You are an excellent example of how people who are abusive have consistent worldviews that justify the abuse. You are placing 100% of the responsibility on the weaker party in the contract, and 0% on the people who designed the contract plus everything that leads up to and comes after the contract. At the same time you clearly understand the human cognitive limitations that make people susceptible to carefully-designed exploitations, you act as if the people who design the scams are not just innocent but justified in taking advantage because money.

And with that, I'm done. You are very dedicated to both exploitation and victim-blaming as justification. I'm not going to convince you otherwise, presumably because you made or make your living from that. “It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it," said Upton Sinclair, and I have better things to do with my time.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#398

Post by alwayslikethis »

contravariant wrote: post #283
capableweb wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Monero is a (practically) untraceable [1] cryptocurrency. I figured that I didn't really need the VPN, but when the news came out that they added support for Monero earlier this year, I decided to support them by giving them another 4.5 EUR deposit in Monero.

1. https://www.getmonero.org/

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#399

Post by wpietri »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #357
tomnipotent wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation." On some level yes. But recently banks here in Australia were busted for charging dead people. https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/apra-punish... Are you going to tell me the dead people are at fault for not taking advantage of services provided? The point here is the relationship between…

For sure!

I also think there are systemic reasons to stop it. If you're running, say, a good streaming service, imagine a competitor coming along that makes a lot of use of dark patterns to get people to sign up and keep paying even though the value is much lower than your service. Now you have a choice: try to compete against a better-funded competitor or go for the same dirty money yourself?

As a society, we want companies to devote their capital and brainpower to making things better for customers that can freely choose the best products. And that's what most company founders want too, so that markets are competitive in fair ways and they can focus on the products that got them excited enough to start a company. So I think it's in the interests of everybody except the parasitically inclined to just rule out exploitative business models.

Re: We are removing the option to create new subscriptions

#400

Post by charsi »

runnerup wrote: post #247
rafale wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cloud do you use? A lot of websites will flag any AWS or data center IP as a bot.

I use whatbox.ca as my global/universal VPN. So far I haven’t seen any issues. It works in places where most VPNs are banned or heavily throttled (like Saudi/Abu Dhabi/Qatar, my workplace, AT&T cellular data, etc)

Isn't whatbox.ca mainly aimed at hosting seedboxes? They are accordingly higher priced than a VPN. Whats the rationale for using them as a VPN ?
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