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Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

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321–330 of 408 posts

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ought not be considered anything close to common courtesy. This is work. Mullvad is engaged in the business of making money. They should show how serious they are with your money. Since when do you have professionals giving you examinations out of common courtesy? Out of courtesy can I get a free cancer screening?

If I doctor performed a cancer screening on me, for free and without me asking, then yes — as a matter of courtesy I would still expect that doctor to tell me if he found cancer, rather than reading about it on his blog later.

That is legally allowed as part of studies, to which a patient must agree after being proposed. Otherwise, it is illegal.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#322
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When their 'common decency' is directly benefiting a money making corporation with shareholders and directors then yes they should definitely get some money out of it.

On the other hand, the lack of common decency can endanger innocent 3rd parties.

If you create a 3rd party app to some closed source insecure back end, thats on you for trusting them or not doing your due diligence.

Time and time again private companies have rug pulled things like api access for 3rd party apps (such as twitter/X). Building 3rd party clients for private systems should already be approached with heavy scepticism and always be prepared for the worst.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs are not snake oil. They transfer the trust of your internet activity from a place of low-trust, your ISP, to a place of high-trust, ideally a trustworthy VPN like Mullvad, IVPN, or Proton. Among other benefits. If you don't like your ISP creating a profile of you and selling it to target ads to you, you should use a VPN. >Should I use a VPN? Yes, almost certainly. A VPN has many advantages, including: 1. Hiding…

> 4. Allowing you to bypass geo-restrictions on certain content. In theory, but as someone who uses Mullvad in the UK on a day-to-day basis on my personal laptops (not my phone) - I'm using it now, I'm afraid there's quite an additional downside I've found, in that because Mullvad's (at least UK, but also French and Dutch ones I've tried) exit IPs are known, many companies (Cloudflare, Akamai) at the very least know…

What some people are doing instead are using proxy vendors that have millions of IPs around the world including residential.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#324
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the largest and most well-marketed VPNs are, in fact, less trustworthy than your average ISP.

I'm a normal person who watches sports streams and maybe 2 years ago I downloaded a torrent of some art movie. My ISP is Comcast. How does your advice apply to me?

They don't know, they're just parroting what other people have shouted without evidence.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#325
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on.

Annoying, isn't it?

You identified as Swedish, and then shifted the goal post to the country where you (apparently) currently reside.

What's your point again? Something about all Americans whether they live in the US or not? Are you trying to be incoherent? Daft? Representative of all Swedes by origin?

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#326
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VPNs are not snake oil. They transfer the trust of your internet activity from a place of low-trust, your ISP, to a place of high-trust, ideally a trustworthy VPN like Mullvad, IVPN, or Proton. Among other benefits. If you don't like your ISP creating a profile of you and selling it to target ads to you, you should use a VPN. >Should I use a VPN? Yes, almost certainly. A VPN has many advantages, including: 1. Hiding…

Unfortunately, the largest and most well-marketed VPNs are, in fact, less trustworthy than your average ISP.

source: trust me bro

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a script that logs IPs for any traffic coming in to my servers on ports that don't accept traffic. I then block those IPs from accessing ports behind which there are services. If they're checking my locked doors, I don't want them coming in my unlocked doors.

Closed ports are not "locked doors", and open ports are not "unlocked doors" That is a binary thought process with a lot of assumptions. You might introduce even more attack surface in pursuit of this "security" measure by installing additional software like fail2ban, for example. Close your ports, maybe assign a non-standard port to the popular ones (like SSH) to reduce log spam, and patch your server often. Anythin…

I thought, and still think, it's a good analogy.

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#328

Sounds like it’s time to drop Mullvad (their ui client is terrible chromium app anyways) and start using a selfhosted provider. This screams three-letter agency.

much anonymity provided by VPNs is through how many people use their exit nodes, “disguising” your traffic among others. also if you hosted your own VPN it would be trivial for one to find its host from an ASN, and from there subpoena your billing information

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ought not be considered anything close to common courtesy. This is work. Mullvad is engaged in the business of making money. They should show how serious they are with your money. Since when do you have professionals giving you examinations out of common courtesy? Out of courtesy can I get a free cancer screening?

If I doctor performed a cancer screening on me, for free and without me asking, then yes — as a matter of courtesy I would still expect that doctor to tell me if he found cancer, rather than reading about it on his blog later.

[deleted]

Re: Mullvad exit IPs are surprisingly identifying

#330
post #178

I work at Mullvad. (co-CEO, co-founder) Some aspects of the described behavior are as we intended and some are not. The cause is not exactly as described in the blog post. As for mitigation, we are already testing a patch of the unintended behavior on a subset of our infrastructure. If any of you try to reproduce the blog post's findings you may get confusing results throughout the day. We will also re-evaluate wheth…

I just want to say I absolutely love Mullvad! You guys did a fantastic job at designing a genuinely good and trustworthy (as much as possible) VPN vendor. You communicating here is just another data point towards this.

I almost want the people doing the mandatory VPN product placement ("This video is sponsored by NordVPN!") to do Mullvad for once. My jaw would hit the floor from unfamiliarity
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