4 ms·

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

shrimpx 4y ago
I think in the case of a one-time payment there’s a record that you paid Mullvad, but there’s no link to an account number.
bigiain 4y ago
For a single payment, they can throw away all the metadata once the funds hit their bank account. They _can't_ do that with recurring subscriptions, since they need something that links to your CC or PayPal details to re-bill it next month/year. They've chosen to not do that any more, possibly as performative privacy, also possibly as having real privacy concerns for their clients, and also also possibly so they can tell law enforcement and courts to stop bothering them when needed. (realistically, it'll be some combination of those three things, and possibly others I've not thought of, that triggered them into this)
- chii 4y ago
  but then as a bad actor, you could reverse the credit card charge, and then the company would not be able to tell which customer reversed the charge!
rtpg 4y ago
I think the idea is that money reaches the company, the company then increments how much time you have left on the account, then deletes records linking payment to the account Like you show up and give me $5, tell me it’s for account XYZ, I go into my admin console and increment the remaining usage time, but don’t write that you were the one giving me $5 There’s a window of time where the link exists of course! But you can get rid of it. (I Hope that they are not storing things like an account start date or too many payment records… it could easily be deanonymized through time stamp correlation and the banks/stripe/PayPal have the data)
NickRandom 4y ago
As far as I am aware, Mulvad only holds on to the payment details for a few weeks and then deletes it so the idea is that you 'age' the account for that time period and then can Torrent Linux ISO's on the forwarded port to your hearts content with any payment information long since deleted. I don't currently use them but am considering switching to them for this reason.
alwayslikethis 4y ago
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/ https://www.getmonero.org/

I think in the case of a one-time payment there’s a record that you paid Mullvad, but there’s no link to an account number.

bigiain 4y ago

For a single payment, they can throw away all the metadata once the funds hit their bank account. They _can't_ do that with recurring subscriptions, since they need something that links to your CC or PayPal details to re-bill it next month/year. They've chosen to not do that any more, possibly as performative privacy, also possibly as having real privacy concerns for their clients, and also also possibly so they can tell law enforcement and courts to stop bothering them when needed. (realistically, it'll be some combination of those three things, and possibly others I've not thought of, that triggered them into this)

chii 4y ago
but then as a bad actor, you could reverse the credit card charge, and then the company would not be able to tell which customer reversed the charge!

rtpg 4y ago

I think the idea is that money reaches the company, the company then increments how much time you have left on the account, then deletes records linking payment to the account Like you show up and give me $5, tell me it’s for account XYZ, I go into my admin console and increment the remaining usage time, but don’t write that you were the one giving me $5 There’s a window of time where the link exists of course! But you can get rid of it. (I Hope that they are not storing things like an account start date or too many payment records… it could easily be deanonymized through time stamp correlation and the banks/stripe/PayPal have the data)

NickRandom 4y ago

As far as I am aware, Mulvad only holds on to the payment details for a few weeks and then deletes it so the idea is that you 'age' the account for that time period and then can Torrent Linux ISO's on the forwarded port to your hearts content with any payment information long since deleted. I don't currently use them but am considering switching to them for this reason.

alwayslikethis 4y ago

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/ https://www.getmonero.org/