Thank you, Mullvad team! This is quite literally the only feature I've been wanting. Everything else works well. Bandwidth? Excellent. Apps? Excellent. WireGuard? Excellent. No form of KYC required, period? Excellent. Payment options? Excellent.
I hope I don't live to see you turn into every other shady VPN service.
I really like mullvad's service too (wiregaurd)... My only issue is that is seems to have become increasingly difficult to access many websites through their servers.
I suppose this is inevitable to some degree with any VPN service, it's part of the deal for more privacy, you have to share an IP with potential sources of abuse. But it seems to have gotten really bad recently to the point that I end up server hoping throughout the day because different websites will have blocked different mullvad servers - to complicate matters some of their newer server IPs hosted by another company are misidentified as russian and blocked by many sites and services.
I'm not blaming Mullvad, but it's changed my use of their service from a set and forget to a constant reminder that i'm on a VPN... I don't know what the solution is beyond some crude cycling of IPs.
Wish the name was easier to remember. It opens opportunity for typo domain/app squatters to take people elsewhere.
I had to double check the spell from reliable sources.
I wonder how they plan to impose compliance on entities that have no legal presence in India, accept cryptocurrency payments, and take no PII as part of the signup process - all of which I believe apply to Mullvad.
Since Mullvad doesn't have any servers in India, they should be unaffected, right? I confirmed it with their support, they said it will not affect their users.
Monero is about to go through a hard fork and significant upgrades, like trading XMR to BTC and back without a centralized exchange. The mining rewards was recently voted to a specific amount for perpetuity, to guarantee it never going to zero. I think the project is going quite well.
monero, without dev tax and pre-mine, simply doesn't have the funds to compete in research with other, more well funded projects. I don't see how a different emission curve would have helped here.
MRL work is progressing on Seraphis[1] which will allow for significantly higher ring sizes without increasing the transaction size. A proof of concept is currently in development.
More people need to put up bounties for feature development. There are some existing sites but they’re not heavily used. I think plenty of people would be happy to develop a feature for 5/6 figures.
There are also some monero whales that could probably stand to contribute to further development even if they don’t do it themselves (like fluffy pony) but unfortunately it looks like they are/he is in the early stages of getting Assanged
This is why tokens make sense. Can fund development of new features if you could integrate new tokens on Monero. It’s how Ethereum has moved mountains with new infrastructure projects.
I gotta say, I love Monero but every single time I see malware deploy a miner it is Monero for obvious reasons. More than any currency I want it to succeed because of true anonymity it provides but when you accept Monero, better beef up your anti-abuse capacity.
It feels wrong going in defending them here but basically nothing else on the planet is CPU mine-able anymore, RandomX was made specifically to exclude GPU's and ASIC's.
If you had intrusions on GPU servers it would be a very different story.
Many years ago I worked for a telco that had a mobile product that you could buy with cash (show up in a convenience store with cash and you would get a SIM card for use straight away without any form of registration).
This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card.
This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe there were legislate uses too - I never found out.)
The problem for the telco was that this was generating hundred fold the number of request for wire tapping and logging by the courts and the police. And by law the telco was required to service these request free of charge.
So in the end the business simply wasn’t there even though the margins were sky high.
Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble.
Just as a reminder, you can bridge from EVMs to Monero via the SECRET bridges, which seems to have the Monero community's blessings on consensus models. There is ample liquidity as well.
So there is bi-directional access to and from the broader crypto ecosystem without centralized exchanges and without the selectively scamming shapeshift-style sites, and for the pros: without OTC desks either.
Well Secret isn't exactly the broader ecosystem, it uses the EVM (as most smart contract platforms do these days) but isn't Ethereum Mainnet. So you'd have to bridge more from there. Of course you could bridge into Ethereum or other chains directly with something like WXMR as well. Everything is getting bridged these days, there's going to be 1000 bridges soon. Users should be aware of the risks!
That said Secret is interesting. Another thing to note though in terms of privacy is that Secret token transactions aren't anonymous afaik, despite the name suggesting otherwise. Only the smart contracts are. It's an interesting design choice, there are probably arguments pro and contra both.
It'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.
My own digital ocean droplet. Its easy to set up and get going, costs only $5/mo, and with all of my other droplets bandwidths combined I effectively have unlimited bandwidth.
Only ever use it on public wifi, and it isn't meant to be "private", just good enough to prevent accidental data leakage at Starbucks/doctors' offices/wherever else my 5g doesn't reach and I'm forced onto public WiFi.
What are people using VPNs for mostly, if they're living in a country without internet censorship?
It's either your ISP or the VPN provider, which can log the websites you have visited, so there isn't a clear advantage of using a VPN.
Sure the VPN provider may claim to log nothing, but that's hard to confirm and not proven to be true in some cases (related thread regarding Protonmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28443449).
For researching confidential topics, TOR appears to be fine.
VPN may have better network bandwidth, or may be blocked from less websites than TOR exit nodes I guess.
I don't have a choice of ISPs. It's not a competitive market and they have no incentive to respect my privacy in the slightest.
In contrast I can choose any VPN provider in the world. It's a competitive market and they have strong incentives to respect privacy because it's one of their main selling points. Any VPN that is discovered to not be respecting privacy will lose a lot of business in short order.
Sure you can say that they can violate privacy in secret, but that's a big risk for them. It's no risk at all for an ISP because their customers have no choice. It's no guarantee, but it's definitely a better situation to use a company that actually has incentives aligned with yours.
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 ISP also sends out letters if you torrent, which can be annoying to receive - Mullvad alleviates that.
ISPs are often in a more powerful position, in the sense that they often have more streams of data to you than just your internet usage. E.g. your mobile service provider is also your ISP when you're on the go, thus they also have your call and text history and location history to correlate with your browsing history.
On top of that there's also the value of just having privacy even if the ISP can be trusted. E.g. I might not mind being seen naked by a friend, but I would still prefer for that to not happen.
In general I think a lot of the big providers who have gone without incidents (and without major changes) for a long time can be trusted. I feel the incidents with Proton were somewhat overblown, since their page on legal notices received did mention that they could be compelled to log IP addresses (or at least that's how I remembered it). But even without that, I think Mullvad has been pushing for "system transparency" where users can verify all the software that's running on their servers, which is a step in the right direction towards providing confidence that they are indeed not logging anything.
Avoiding my university or workplace from snooping on my traffic.
I’ve had it where I was served an add from a server that had previously been implicated in a bot net operation. The university told me I was infected and that my computer was not allowed back on the network until I came in person to show them that I had done a full wipe and reinstall of my OS.
I personally use it to evade IP-based tracking, for random example LinkedIn. Try browsing LI from your home. LI will suggest that you connect to others in your home. Even though I have a fake LI profile, not linked to other members of my household, so this doesn't actually invade my privacy, it's still yucky that they maintain a shadow connection between us. There are tons of sites/services that do this kind of simple yet invasive tracking.
I also use it in rare cases for torrenting or downloading content. I normally have other methods for torrenting and seeding privately but in some cases I want another level of privacy (nothing illegal/bad/censor worthy, and therefore would be ok with law enforcement connecting the dots through VPN), a level that VPN serves well.
I am glad that the VPN providers sell people on nonsense, on protections they can't guarantee (to Western countries anyway). This makes the service actually available at all. To me it's an analog of the https-everywhere cargo cult, that makes it super easy these days to get a free SSL cert.
No technology is perfect. It doesn't make it useless.
For me one big use case: avoiding stupid geoblocks on motorsport streams. Often streams are available in countries where the licence has not been sold on Youtube or the websites of the sport itself (sometimes for free, sometimes as a subscription).
For example Formula 1 has F1TV that you can only sign up for in some countries (where they didn't sell out to Sky essentially).
Like, I don't even mind paying for a service if it's good and actually available!
> What are people using VPNs for mostly, if they're living in a country without internet censorship?
I find it's a convenient way to prevent services beyond my ISP from knowing where am I based on IP address.
All of those apps you have on your devices presumably have permanent connections back to their servers and they can very easily tell if you're at home, out on mobile data, in an office, or in a cafe/public library or even in a different country.
With a VPN, they currently think I'm in Dallas; which I'm nowhere near right now.
There's significantly more competition among VPNs than there are among ISPs in any given area, so it should be no surprise that some VPNs are more trusted than ISPs. Most people have only a few choices for their ISP, and maybe only one that offers the features they require (for example, only one ISP in my area offers high enough upload speeds to reasonable backup my computers). In many cases people don't have a choice of ISP that will keep their data private.
Therefore, you are trading trusting your ISP for trusting your VPN, but at least you are getting someone who says they care about your privacy (rather than someone who has a track record of not caring) and someone who would face significant business repercussions if they became untrusted, rather than someone that would face almost no business repercussions.
> may be blocked from less websites than TOR exit nodes I guess.
Try routing all your traffic through TOR and trying to navigate the modern web or common apps. It is _extremely_ punishing when you connect through TOR exit nodes.
As a Mullvad fan this makes me very nervous. If they begin being used by, and taking payment from criminals it's going to bring a lot of extra heat their way.
[+] [-] seanw444|3 years ago|reply
I hope I don't live to see you turn into every other shady VPN service.
[+] [-] tomxor|3 years ago|reply
I suppose this is inevitable to some degree with any VPN service, it's part of the deal for more privacy, you have to share an IP with potential sources of abuse. But it seems to have gotten really bad recently to the point that I end up server hoping throughout the day because different websites will have blocked different mullvad servers - to complicate matters some of their newer server IPs hosted by another company are misidentified as russian and blocked by many sites and services.
I'm not blaming Mullvad, but it's changed my use of their service from a set and forget to a constant reminder that i'm on a VPN... I don't know what the solution is beyond some crude cycling of IPs.
[+] [-] heipei|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mekster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] searchableguy|3 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] atypeoferror|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tintedfireglass|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pythonb3sss|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0des|3 years ago|reply
Devs have to eat and all, but I wonder sometimes if a longer and slower emission curve would have helped here. Monero is mostly emitted at this point.
For a project that means so much to the world and still has much work to do, its a shame how things turned out with MRL.
[+] [-] hereme888|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selsta|3 years ago|reply
MRL work is progressing on Seraphis[1] which will allow for significantly higher ring sizes without increasing the transaction size. A proof of concept is currently in development.
[1] https://www.getmonero.org/2021/12/22/what-is-seraphis.html
[+] [-] opportune|3 years ago|reply
There are also some monero whales that could probably stand to contribute to further development even if they don’t do it themselves (like fluffy pony) but unfortunately it looks like they are/he is in the early stages of getting Assanged
[+] [-] vmception|3 years ago|reply
people deciding if they want excess holdings of Monero shouldnt base their confidence on a standing committee
[+] [-] seibelj|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badrabbit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|3 years ago|reply
You might think it's because it's private and confidential but it's actually because it's suited for CPU mining.
[+] [-] Grimburger|3 years ago|reply
If you had intrusions on GPU servers it would be a very different story.
[+] [-] stavros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway4good|3 years ago|reply
This was 5 times as expensive compared to when you paid by debit or credit card.
This offering was extremely popular amongst drug dealers and people needing a burner to call in a bomb threat. (Maybe there were legislate uses too - I never found out.)
The problem for the telco was that this was generating hundred fold the number of request for wire tapping and logging by the courts and the police. And by law the telco was required to service these request free of charge.
So in the end the business simply wasn’t there even though the margins were sky high.
Moral of the story: selling stuff to criminals might seem like easy money but may not be worth the trouble.
[+] [-] lordofgibbons|3 years ago|reply
Interesting that you think only criminals want privacy. I use Signal and TLS too, I must be Pablo Escobar's second coming?
[+] [-] Etheryte|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuroguro|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|3 years ago|reply
So there is bi-directional access to and from the broader crypto ecosystem without centralized exchanges and without the selectively scamming shapeshift-style sites, and for the pros: without OTC desks either.
[+] [-] trompetenaccoun|3 years ago|reply
That said Secret is interesting. Another thing to note though in terms of privacy is that Secret token transactions aren't anonymous afaik, despite the name suggesting otherwise. Only the smart contracts are. It's an interesting design choice, there are probably arguments pro and contra both.
[+] [-] gog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] usednet|3 years ago|reply
I personally use IVPN and Mullvad.
[+] [-] jermaustin1|3 years ago|reply
Only ever use it on public wifi, and it isn't meant to be "private", just good enough to prevent accidental data leakage at Starbucks/doctors' offices/wherever else my 5g doesn't reach and I'm forced onto public WiFi.
[+] [-] nuclx|3 years ago|reply
It's either your ISP or the VPN provider, which can log the websites you have visited, so there isn't a clear advantage of using a VPN. Sure the VPN provider may claim to log nothing, but that's hard to confirm and not proven to be true in some cases (related thread regarding Protonmail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28443449).
For researching confidential topics, TOR appears to be fine. VPN may have better network bandwidth, or may be blocked from less websites than TOR exit nodes I guess.
[+] [-] modeless|3 years ago|reply
In contrast I can choose any VPN provider in the world. It's a competitive market and they have strong incentives to respect privacy because it's one of their main selling points. Any VPN that is discovered to not be respecting privacy will lose a lot of business in short order.
Sure you can say that they can violate privacy in secret, but that's a big risk for them. It's no risk at all for an ISP because their customers have no choice. It's no guarantee, but it's definitely a better situation to use a company that actually has incentives aligned with yours.
[+] [-] ziddoap|3 years ago|reply
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 ISP also sends out letters if you torrent, which can be annoying to receive - Mullvad alleviates that.
[+] [-] dotnet00|3 years ago|reply
On top of that there's also the value of just having privacy even if the ISP can be trusted. E.g. I might not mind being seen naked by a friend, but I would still prefer for that to not happen.
In general I think a lot of the big providers who have gone without incidents (and without major changes) for a long time can be trusted. I feel the incidents with Proton were somewhat overblown, since their page on legal notices received did mention that they could be compelled to log IP addresses (or at least that's how I remembered it). But even without that, I think Mullvad has been pushing for "system transparency" where users can verify all the software that's running on their servers, which is a step in the right direction towards providing confidence that they are indeed not logging anything.
[+] [-] sgillen|3 years ago|reply
I’ve had it where I was served an add from a server that had previously been implicated in a bot net operation. The university told me I was infected and that my computer was not allowed back on the network until I came in person to show them that I had done a full wipe and reinstall of my OS.
[+] [-] jiveturkey|3 years ago|reply
I personally use it to evade IP-based tracking, for random example LinkedIn. Try browsing LI from your home. LI will suggest that you connect to others in your home. Even though I have a fake LI profile, not linked to other members of my household, so this doesn't actually invade my privacy, it's still yucky that they maintain a shadow connection between us. There are tons of sites/services that do this kind of simple yet invasive tracking.
I also use it in rare cases for torrenting or downloading content. I normally have other methods for torrenting and seeding privately but in some cases I want another level of privacy (nothing illegal/bad/censor worthy, and therefore would be ok with law enforcement connecting the dots through VPN), a level that VPN serves well.
I am glad that the VPN providers sell people on nonsense, on protections they can't guarantee (to Western countries anyway). This makes the service actually available at all. To me it's an analog of the https-everywhere cargo cult, that makes it super easy these days to get a free SSL cert.
No technology is perfect. It doesn't make it useless.
[+] [-] V1ndaar|3 years ago|reply
For example Formula 1 has F1TV that you can only sign up for in some countries (where they didn't sell out to Sky essentially).
Like, I don't even mind paying for a service if it's good and actually available!
[+] [-] leodriesch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] topdancing|3 years ago|reply
I find it's a convenient way to prevent services beyond my ISP from knowing where am I based on IP address.
All of those apps you have on your devices presumably have permanent connections back to their servers and they can very easily tell if you're at home, out on mobile data, in an office, or in a cafe/public library or even in a different country.
With a VPN, they currently think I'm in Dallas; which I'm nowhere near right now.
[+] [-] zucker42|3 years ago|reply
Therefore, you are trading trusting your ISP for trusting your VPN, but at least you are getting someone who says they care about your privacy (rather than someone who has a track record of not caring) and someone who would face significant business repercussions if they became untrusted, rather than someone that would face almost no business repercussions.
[+] [-] photon-torpedo|3 years ago|reply
Current example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31248250
[+] [-] pluc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] f38zf5vdt|3 years ago|reply
Try routing all your traffic through TOR and trying to navigate the modern web or common apps. It is _extremely_ punishing when you connect through TOR exit nodes.
[+] [-] ulzeraj|3 years ago|reply
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