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Times Square at one point was practically half full of Mullvad ads. I already distrusted it but the sheer amount of money they spent to do that made it shadier

Times Square at one point was practically half full of Mullvad ads. I already distrusted it but the sheer amount of money they spent to do that made it shadier to me

consumer451 1y ago
Might I ask, what made you distrust them prior to that?
ranger_danger 1y ago
what constitutes just the right amount of advertising to make it not shady to you?
arielcostas 1y ago
I feel like other VPNs sponsoring YouTubers or others to talk wonders about them while not really using their product makes me trust them less, especially if they are based in some opaque jurisdiction like NordVPN (Panama) or ExpressVPN (British Virgin Islands) among others
jorvi 1y ago
Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval. Of the big VPNs, the only one's that have ever felt shady to me are NordVPN and Private Internet Access. NordVPN because of the sheer amount of false advertising they pay YouTubers to do, and Private Internet Access because of how cheap they are and how poorly they maintain their infrastructure. Their .ovpn generated files haven't worked for 2+ years now because they include certificates with malformed revocation dates, and refuse to pay the certificate authority to update them.
- ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
  >Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval. Yep. And I use the VPN connection (and/or TOR) to re-up my Mullvad VPN when I run low. Mostly I use the VPN to protect my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here and/or other sites. And of course for torrenting. What's more, I had some monero (XMR) left over from some other transactions, so I use that to pay for the VPN connection. As such, unless Mullvad is storing the IP address from which I connect (and they claim they do not), it would be difficult (but not impossible -- I don't always use VPN when posting anonymously/throwaway -- that isn't a challenge!) to identify me through my VPN connections.
  - crossroadsguy 1y ago
    > my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here What's the data/IP/etc retention logging situation of HN? Do they have a page on it?
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  They also allow cash and monero payments over a onion site.
- throw98iuy 1y ago
  >Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. no their not. protonvpn spends money to offer free account as form of advertisment. mullvd spend money on weird billboards. protonvpn provide free privacy even for those from 3rld world country. you can create proton email anonymousley thats also protonvpn account protonvpn is principled on privacy.
  - jorvi 1y ago
    ProtonVPN is so principled they use a company providing datamining services (Tesonet) to run their VPN. That doesn't mean they're datamining their customers, but it is terrible optics. Proton is great, and in many ways they're doing great stuff. But in this case I wouldn't call them principled.

Times Square at one point was practically half full of Mullvad ads. I already distrusted it but the sheer amount of money they spent to do that made it shadier to me

consumer451 1y ago

Might I ask, what made you distrust them prior to that?

ranger_danger 1y ago

what constitutes just the right amount of advertising to make it not shady to you?

arielcostas 1y ago

I feel like other VPNs sponsoring YouTubers or others to talk wonders about them while not really using their product makes me trust them less, especially if they are based in some opaque jurisdiction like NordVPN (Panama) or ExpressVPN (British Virgin Islands) among others

jorvi 1y ago

Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval. Of the big VPNs, the only one's that have ever felt shady to me are NordVPN and Private Internet Access. NordVPN because of the sheer amount of false advertising they pay YouTubers to do, and Private Internet Access because of how cheap they are and how poorly they maintain their infrastructure. Their .ovpn generated files haven't worked for 2+ years now because they include certificates with malformed revocation dates, and refuse to pay the certificate authority to update them.

ThrowMeAway1618 1y ago
>Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. You can't even make a real account, you can only generate an account number that you can charge, and I assume they do some sort of clever tricks to keep themselves as blind as possible to who uses the account number. Firefox Relay is also just whitelabeled Mullvad, so they have Mozilla's stamp of approval. Yep. And I use the VPN connection (and/or TOR) to re-up my Mullvad VPN when I run low. Mostly I use the VPN to protect my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here and/or other sites. And of course for torrenting. What's more, I had some monero (XMR) left over from some other transactions, so I use that to pay for the VPN connection. As such, unless Mullvad is storing the IP address from which I connect (and they claim they do not), it would be difficult (but not impossible -- I don't always use VPN when posting anonymously/throwaway -- that isn't a challenge!) to identify me through my VPN connections.
- crossroadsguy 1y ago
  > my privacy when posting with a throwaway account here What's the data/IP/etc retention logging situation of HN? Do they have a page on it?
akimbostrawman 1y ago
They also allow cash and monero payments over a onion site.
throw98iuy 1y ago
>Mullvad is rather principled on privacy. no their not. protonvpn spends money to offer free account as form of advertisment. mullvd spend money on weird billboards. protonvpn provide free privacy even for those from 3rld world country. you can create proton email anonymousley thats also protonvpn account protonvpn is principled on privacy.
- jorvi 1y ago
  ProtonVPN is so principled they use a company providing datamining services (Tesonet) to run their VPN. That doesn't mean they're datamining their customers, but it is terrible optics. Proton is great, and in many ways they're doing great stuff. But in this case I wouldn't call them principled.