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What sort of abuses you have encountered when dealing with port forwarding? Was it DMCA'd content hosting or were there other major issues with it? Also how doe

What sort of abuses you have encountered when dealing with port forwarding? Was it DMCA'd content hosting or were there other major issues with it? Also how does other VPNs that offer port forwarding (like Proton) function against those sort of abuses?

alwyn 3y ago
They give some examples of things bad actors used port forwarding for in the blog post[1] announcing the removal of the feature. [1]: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-f...
- azalemeth 3y ago
  Reading between the lines, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't highly undesirable content, i.e. child porn or fraud. This came about a month after a very publicised raid by the Swedish police -- after which they left with nothing [1]. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mullvad-vpn-hit-with-search-warrant-in-attempted-police-raid https://www.pcmag.com/news/mullvad-vpn-hit-with-search-warra...
  - kfreds 3y ago
    FYI: Our decision to remove port forwarding was not a reaction to the surprise visit by Swedish police. I wish we had been more clear about this in our blog post.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    I am highly certain it involved both and more. For example, say someone wanted to run their botnet distribution server. Now, unless you’re a state actor working for North Korea or some such, that generally gets a rather angry knock on your door in a rather short period of time. Being able to hide your IP/traffic for $5/mo is going to save you a significant amount of trouble. I’m certain AWS and other hosting providers keep track of any activity that’s too strange, and the authorities will have your hosting provider give you the boot even if they can’t figure out who you are exactly. Developing a reputation for allowing, if not quite condoning such behavior will quite quickly get you shut down as a business. Even if they can’t “prove” anything, you’ll get hassled, harassed, and investigated to death because your existence goes from being a nuisance to being a problem. Some guy torrented a few movies on your VPN? Whatever. Some guy used your VPN to break into their local government’s servers? If they can’t find him, they’ll take it out on you.
electroly 3y ago
VPN port forwarding is, by and large, used for BitTorrent because you can't seed without it. VPNs are used for BitTorrent in general because it's well-known that IPs participating in BitTorrent are monitored and logged by anyone who wants to[0]. I bet it's at least 100 BitTorrent users for every 1 user using port forwarding for any other purpose. [0] https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/
- Arcuru 3y ago
  You can still seed/download without port forwarding setup, however the other person you're connected to needs to have port forwarding. Basically either side of the P2P connection needs to be reachable from the open internet, but not both. So you can still seed, it just won't be as usable.
kfreds 3y ago
There were several major issues.

alwyn 3y ago

They give some examples of things bad actors used port forwarding for in the blog post[1] announcing the removal of the feature. [1]: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/ https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-f...

azalemeth 3y ago
Reading between the lines, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't highly undesirable content, i.e. child porn or fraud. This came about a month after a very publicised raid by the Swedish police -- after which they left with nothing [1]. [1] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mullvad-vpn-hit-with-search-warrant-in-attempted-police-raid https://www.pcmag.com/news/mullvad-vpn-hit-with-search-warra...
- kfreds 3y ago
  FYI: Our decision to remove port forwarding was not a reaction to the surprise visit by Swedish police. I wish we had been more clear about this in our blog post.
- vGPU 3y ago
  I am highly certain it involved both and more. For example, say someone wanted to run their botnet distribution server. Now, unless you’re a state actor working for North Korea or some such, that generally gets a rather angry knock on your door in a rather short period of time. Being able to hide your IP/traffic for $5/mo is going to save you a significant amount of trouble. I’m certain AWS and other hosting providers keep track of any activity that’s too strange, and the authorities will have your hosting provider give you the boot even if they can’t figure out who you are exactly. Developing a reputation for allowing, if not quite condoning such behavior will quite quickly get you shut down as a business. Even if they can’t “prove” anything, you’ll get hassled, harassed, and investigated to death because your existence goes from being a nuisance to being a problem. Some guy torrented a few movies on your VPN? Whatever. Some guy used your VPN to break into their local government’s servers? If they can’t find him, they’ll take it out on you.

electroly 3y ago

VPN port forwarding is, by and large, used for BitTorrent because you can't seed without it. VPNs are used for BitTorrent in general because it's well-known that IPs participating in BitTorrent are monitored and logged by anyone who wants to[0]. I bet it's at least 100 BitTorrent users for every 1 user using port forwarding for any other purpose. [0] https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/ https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com/

Arcuru 3y ago
You can still seed/download without port forwarding setup, however the other person you're connected to needs to have port forwarding. Basically either side of the P2P connection needs to be reachable from the open internet, but not both. So you can still seed, it just won't be as usable.

kfreds 3y ago

There were several major issues.