Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was under the impression the socks feature no longer works, are you currently using it?
I am, through the mullvad add-on.
TIL, thanks!
Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
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Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#212Full title: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant. Customer data not compromised As a customer, I have no doubt about the "customer data not compromised". I'm a paying customer, yet I have never given them any PII. Great service.
Technically they could have been logging your traffic, which is “customer data” even if it doesn’t identify you by name
Does anyone here know how to corroborate Mullvad's account of this event? Perhaps we can find the Swedish entity that wrote the warrant and any public information reported by the officers executing said warrant?
If such information is publicly accessible, and it corroborates Mullvad's story here, I'd feel like that's pretty compelling evidence that we can trust that Mullvad isn't simply committing fraud by promising not to log customer data while actually logging it.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait what? If you go to the post office and pay with your debit card, how exactly do they figure out who you are based on the stamp?
It's all metadata correlation. The UK will know with certainty that a specific stamp was used to send a specific envelope to Mullvad. (e.g., America has been logging images of every envelope that passes through its postal service for over two decades). It would also be trivial for the UK to know: - When and where that stamp was initially sold (and to whom, if buying online!) - When and where an envelope bearing that…
And all of this is null and void if you buy your stamps from aliexpress and for the low low effort of simply driving to a different city to throw the envelope into the postbox.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused by your sarcasm. A one-time physical mailing can be incredibly anonymous.
It's also incredibly easy to fuck up and accidentally hand them a DNA sample, fingerprints, handwriting sample, etc.
Anonymity is not binary. It's a spectrum. Phyical cash mailed to a company with only an account number is significantly more anonymous than a check or credit card they bill.
Perfect anonymity is probably impossible because information theory is impossible to escape. Which means you are trying to determine how far along the spectrum you can reasonably get for your particular risk profile.
Comments that pretend like perfect anonymity is the goal or act like it's binary are singularly unhelpful.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can bet 99.99% that Mullvad throws the envelope in the trash and just forgets about it. So, yes, there is a theory that someone may go in the trash in Sweden, finds the envelope, the stamp (and it has to be a british one), investigate who bought the stamp, get the assistance of the shopkeeper in UK (without raising suspicions), successfully reviews tons of security cameras footage to find who bought, etc. And still d…
> Can bet 99.99% that Mullvad throws the envelope in the trash and just forgets about it. Storage is cheap - really cheap. I bet automatically capturing images of all mail during sorting and archiving that for years is not only viable, but a vital investigation/intelligence tool. One would ask Mullvad for the cash payment dates[1], and cross-reference with all mail sent to a Mullvad postal address. One city-level dat…
USPS scans all envelopes.
You can get scans of all your mail through the informed delivery program.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
A service provider may claim to not store any user data, but they could be lying. From the article: "After demonstrating that this is indeed how our service works" Presumably, Mullvad employees showed this data does not exist live.
> service provider may claim to not store any user data, but they could be lying. As someone who ran a VPN in the past, this blog post is extremely strange as well as the purported described sequence of events. Police in any jurisdiction aren’t jokes - especially not Sweden where they can absolutely walk in and take your stuff according to mullvads website [1]. It’s 2023 - if a VPN is how you’re doing your privacy yo…
I'm satisfied with the transparency Mullvad has shown by publishing its 9 audits[1] and with their efforts to ask for as little information from users as possible. I also appreciate how Mullvad releases up-to-date source code for all of its software clients, which I consider a bare minimum for any VPN to even be considered.[2]
Private Internet Access, on the other hand, does not release up-to-date source code for its software clients:
- PIA Android client: latest source release v3.14.0 (Mar 18, 2022) vs. latest Google Play release v3.18.0 (Feb 22, 2023)[3]
- PIA iOS client: latest source release v3.14.0 (Mar 18, 2022) vs. latest App Store release v3.20.0 (Mar 1, 2023)[4]
- PIA desktop client: latest source release v3.3.0 (Feb 23, 2022) / v3.4.1-beta1 (Aug 18, 2022) vs. latest downloadable release v3.3.1 (unknown)[5]
- PIA browser extension: latest source release v3.1.0 (May 31, 2021) vs. latest Chrome Web Store release v3.2.0 (March 8, 2022)[6]
It's not clear to me how much of a say you still have in PIA's operations, but if you have any influence, I kindly ask you to direct them to release the source code of PIA's clients on time, every time a new client version is released. Open sourcing PIA's clients was something you promised PIA would do to reassure customers after PIA was acquired by the former adware/malware distributor Kape Technologies.[7]
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[1] Mullvad's audits: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/tag/audits/
[2] Mullvad's GitHub repos: https://github.com/mullvad
[3] PIA Android client - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/android/tags / Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.privateint...
[4] PIA iOS client - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/vpn-ios/tags / App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vpn-by-private-internet-access...
[5] PIA desktop client - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/desktop/releases / PIA website: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/download/linux-vpn
[6] PIA Chrome extension - GitHub: https://github.com/pia-foss/extension-chrome/releases / Chrome Web Store: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/private-internet-a...
[7] Our conversation in 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21613267 (I appreciated your response at the time)
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
That one's pretty easy to disprove though. Just have a computer solve a random NP-complete problem and then verify it by hand.
Read a page of text, then read it again to see if it changed. This test never seems to fail, at least in the sort of dreams I can remember having after waking up. Usually I can't read at all in dreams, and when I can, the text is different every time I read it.
> Usually I can't read at all in dreams
I thought this was just me! There have been times when I've "read" in dreams (signs, usually), but I don't actually visualize the words. I just "know" what they say.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you, please, explain?
We're assuming in this scenario that your memory is still basically functional, so the math on a sheet of paper won't be replaced suddenly without you noticing. If you can't even remember things in the medium term that's a level beyond "trapped in a dream" that's much more hopeless. So, with that assumption, you make a computer solve a problem that's impossible for a human to work through in a practical amount of tim…
This assumes the dreamer is a human brain.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#219I'm glad they are so transparent about it.
Why wouldn't they? It's free marketing material.
Re: Mullvad VPN was subject to a search warrant – customer data not compromised
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you, please, explain?
We're assuming in this scenario that your memory is still basically functional, so the math on a sheet of paper won't be replaced suddenly without you noticing. If you can't even remember things in the medium term that's a level beyond "trapped in a dream" that's much more hopeless. So, with that assumption, you make a computer solve a problem that's impossible for a human to work through in a practical amount of tim…
At least in my dreams, nonsensical things happen all the time, but within the dream seem completely reasonable.