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Mullvad is the only VPN I will ever trust. Yet again they ace the test.

cedws 10mo ago
Not sure why you've been downvoted. Somebody protecting their business?
flumpcakes 10mo ago
I also use Mullvad VPN exclusively for my VPN needs. The fact I can get 6 months of access with a scratch card bought from a store & my account is just a random integer number is an example of privacy by design: no email, no phone numbers, no credit cards. I don't even do anything illegal, I'd just rather have a (what I feel) trusted option when I want to browse the Internet anonymously.
- illusive4080 10mo ago
  Can you buy those in US stores? I’ve been paying for Mullvad with Monero for years. Love it
  - phantom784 10mo ago
    Amazon, but that kind of defeats the point.
    - buildbot 10mo ago
      Buy amazon gift card in cash, setup new account, ship scratch card to locker? (Idk if they’d let you do that). I think you can still mail them cash?
      - phantom784 10mo ago
        Can an Amazon account be made anonymously? (I've never tried).
        buildbot 10mo ago
        I assume if all the inputs are anonymous you could? Like phone/email. Never tried either haha.
    - flumpcakes 10mo ago
      It doesn't defeat the point in my threat model. No one in the position to log my traffic knows who I am other than my source IP address (which is already enough to link it back to me anyway). So let's take Mullvad at their word that they don't log anything, what's the threat now? Maybe Amazon are x-raying the card numbers before shipping them out to customers, but that would require Mullvad giving up the card number -> account number -> account number traffic logs. Not much of a threat there. Maybe all amazon orders are funnelled somewhere and they correlate the fact I bought a VPN card with my home address, and then correlate my bandwidth into Mullvad IPs (gained from my ISP logs) with data leaving Mullvad but that's all very unlikely and very circumstantial. I'm also not doing anything illegal so perhaps my threat model/level is lower than the 'average' VPN user. Anyway, not to be a shill but honestly I am just completely won over with how Mullvad do business. I know that a VPN does not make you automatically 'private'/'anonymous' but just the way they do business makes me happy.
      - phantom784 10mo ago
        But then how is that more secure than just paying Mullvad directly? Either way, there's a record of "this person gave money to Mullvad".
        flumpcakes 10mo ago
        Because the people who know who I am, and the people who know what I browse are different. If I paid directly to Mullvad they would know both. The simple fact they go out of their way to buy their services in this way makes me believe them even more when they say they don't log user traffic, unlike other VPNs.
- gspr 10mo ago
  You can even just randomly generate such an ID number, write it on a piece of paper and enclose it with cash in one of several currencies, and post it to them.
drnick1 10mo ago
The best thing is that they accept crypto. I wouldn't want to pay for a VPN with a credit card in my name.
- hxtk 10mo ago
  But you have to get money into your crypto wallet somehow, which makes it relatively easy to deanonymize for most users (serious crypto privacy enthusiasts could of course pay cash for their crypto or perhaps mine it themselves) if they're looking at your traffic specifically, but hard if you're only worried about bulk collection. IMO the coolest privacy option they have is to literally mail them an envelope full of cash with just your account's cash payment ID.
  - illusive4080 10mo ago
    You can exchange common coins into Monero and Monero is fully private.
- jopsen 10mo ago
  > I wouldn't want to pay for a VPN with a credit card in my name. Wow, you must be using the VPN for some seriously shady stuff.
  - ssl-3 10mo ago
    Back when I was doing that uber-shady business of torrenting, and this kind of VPN was much less-common than it is today, I paid for VPN access with crypto. I'd gather a small amount of that up (however I did that), keep it in an offline wallet, and spend it on VPN service every now and then. It just seemed like the right way to go about things. (And then I lost that wallet, because of course I did, with about $14 worth of BTC in it. I didn't care enough at that time to see if I'd backed it up properly; I wasn't planning on using it for anything anymore anyway. That was in 2014 and those backups are waaaay gone now, but it'd be around $2k worth of BTC today -- plenty to buy some DDR5 RAM. Whoopsie-doodle!)
    - 10mo ago

cedws 10mo ago

Not sure why you've been downvoted. Somebody protecting their business?

I also use Mullvad VPN exclusively for my VPN needs. The fact I can get 6 months of access with a scratch card bought from a store & my account is just a random integer number is an example of privacy by design: no email, no phone numbers, no credit cards. I don't even do anything illegal, I'd just rather have a (what I feel) trusted option when I want to browse the Internet anonymously.

illusive4080 10mo ago
Can you buy those in US stores? I’ve been paying for Mullvad with Monero for years. Love it
- phantom784 10mo ago
  Amazon, but that kind of defeats the point.
  - buildbot 10mo ago
    Buy amazon gift card in cash, setup new account, ship scratch card to locker? (Idk if they’d let you do that). I think you can still mail them cash?
    - phantom784 10mo ago
      Can an Amazon account be made anonymously? (I've never tried).
      - buildbot 10mo ago
        I assume if all the inputs are anonymous you could? Like phone/email. Never tried either haha.
  - flumpcakes 10mo ago
    It doesn't defeat the point in my threat model. No one in the position to log my traffic knows who I am other than my source IP address (which is already enough to link it back to me anyway). So let's take Mullvad at their word that they don't log anything, what's the threat now? Maybe Amazon are x-raying the card numbers before shipping them out to customers, but that would require Mullvad giving up the card number -> account number -> account number traffic logs. Not much of a threat there. Maybe all amazon orders are funnelled somewhere and they correlate the fact I bought a VPN card with my home address, and then correlate my bandwidth into Mullvad IPs (gained from my ISP logs) with data leaving Mullvad but that's all very unlikely and very circumstantial. I'm also not doing anything illegal so perhaps my threat model/level is lower than the 'average' VPN user. Anyway, not to be a shill but honestly I am just completely won over with how Mullvad do business. I know that a VPN does not make you automatically 'private'/'anonymous' but just the way they do business makes me happy.
    - phantom784 10mo ago
      But then how is that more secure than just paying Mullvad directly? Either way, there's a record of "this person gave money to Mullvad".
      - flumpcakes 10mo ago
        Because the people who know who I am, and the people who know what I browse are different. If I paid directly to Mullvad they would know both. The simple fact they go out of their way to buy their services in this way makes me believe them even more when they say they don't log user traffic, unlike other VPNs.
gspr 10mo ago
You can even just randomly generate such an ID number, write it on a piece of paper and enclose it with cash in one of several currencies, and post it to them.

drnick1 10mo ago

The best thing is that they accept crypto. I wouldn't want to pay for a VPN with a credit card in my name.

hxtk 10mo ago
But you have to get money into your crypto wallet somehow, which makes it relatively easy to deanonymize for most users (serious crypto privacy enthusiasts could of course pay cash for their crypto or perhaps mine it themselves) if they're looking at your traffic specifically, but hard if you're only worried about bulk collection. IMO the coolest privacy option they have is to literally mail them an envelope full of cash with just your account's cash payment ID.
- illusive4080 10mo ago
  You can exchange common coins into Monero and Monero is fully private.
jopsen 10mo ago
> I wouldn't want to pay for a VPN with a credit card in my name. Wow, you must be using the VPN for some seriously shady stuff.
- ssl-3 10mo ago
  Back when I was doing that uber-shady business of torrenting, and this kind of VPN was much less-common than it is today, I paid for VPN access with crypto. I'd gather a small amount of that up (however I did that), keep it in an offline wallet, and spend it on VPN service every now and then. It just seemed like the right way to go about things. (And then I lost that wallet, because of course I did, with about $14 worth of BTC in it. I didn't care enough at that time to see if I'd backed it up properly; I wasn't planning on using it for anything anymore anyway. That was in 2014 and those backups are waaaay gone now, but it'd be around $2k worth of BTC today -- plenty to buy some DDR5 RAM. Whoopsie-doodle!)
  - 10mo ago