We are removing the option to create new subscriptions
mullvad.net
mullvad.net
Hadn't heard of Mullvad before reading this, figured I'd give it a try. That is hands down the BEST onboarding experience for an app (let alone a VPN) I've had in I don't know how long. Took me maybe 2 minutes to go from no account to a working VPN connection.
I love that everything is anonymous (down to the account credentials just being a randomly generated token).
Since I'm also a ProtonMail user and I considered switching to them for VPN as well but their python client doesn't seem to work correctly on my Arch Linux install and it doesn't give me anything useful to debug it beyond "An unknown error has occured" so I couldn't be bothered to investigate beyond that.
I can't speak to their privacy as my VPN usecase is usually just "I need an IP in another region," but to the best of my understanding they are one of if not the best in the business.
Mullvad even gives you a 10% discount for bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and monero payments.
I am a bit disappointed that they haven't yet integrated bitcoin lightning network. That would be a huge improvement for reduced transaction fees given the low value of transactions they deal with, as well as instant confirmation rather than 6 block (~1 hour) confirmations. You could even theoretically stream nanopayments for each minute of use with lightning, rather than pay for a whole month.
I also particularly like the flat no-fuss EUR5 a month fee.
Just the only vpn with any integrity left remaining, no biggie.
How did you pay?
In an age where dissertations about what color and position to use for buttons go pages long, that's a courageous position that follows a clear strategy. Kudos!
For example, the port-forwarding feature won't work if you have a recurring subscription.
This just extends that kind of thinking to the service in general.
Been a Mullvad customer for a long time now, and it's always been awesome.
Yep, I had to cancel my subscription recently to get port forwarding working. I've been a customer for a few years now and trusted that they were doing this because it made sense from a privacy standpoint.
Is this something to do with state-level actors?
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)
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)
I think from a law enforcement/accountability standpoint, if an "actor" is accused of wrongdoing while using Mullvad's port forwarding service, Mullvad might have some evidence linking the "actor" to an actual identity, since they have the payment information. Depending on the laws of whatever territories, Mullvad may be compelled to leak that info to a judge. Without that information, then there's no information they can ever be forced to leak.
In this particular case, with a privacy tailwind, it will be unsurprising if it ends up increasing their sales.
For sure there's some abuse of the model where you're selling something that should be a one-time item, but that's not the case here, and Mullvad is providing an ongoing service (and still billing by month / year / etc. for the service, just without automatic renewals).
A fundamental part of healthy business relationships is value for value. E.g., you give me money, I give you a sandwich, you take the sandwich, eat it, and are happy with it. If you keep paying me for sandwiches but I don't give them to you, that's not healthy. Ditto if I put them on the counter but you stop taking them.
Personally, I think there should be a law that all service/software subscriptions auto-suspend after 30 days of non-use. Because right now there's a big incentive for businesses to get you to sign up for things they think you're not going to use, and to keep on charging you even though they know you're not using it.
But to me their arguments sound too much like blackmail "With this model there is incentive for us to make longer-lasting products which is good for the environment". Well, sure but if you actually cared about the environment instead of money you'd be doing that right now. Why do we have to pay them more for less in order for them to do this?
To me this really sounds like a "pay us what we want or we'll mess up this environment of yours even more" extortion scheme.
The older generation is more against it but they tend to not trust tech very much anyway. They're not the ones buying a new phone every year, they use it for many years and even get it fixed when it breaks.
But mullvad isn't targeting mainstream!
It's mainstream compatible, as-in not too hard to use, but that's it.
Also mainstream only cares about VPNs because they believe it does magically things, like somehow better protecting all your privacy even if you are logged into Facebook or somehow making account hijacking or banking scams less likely :/
That's why they will go anyway with VPN providers which do a lot of ad advertisement to make them subconscious feel like it's doing all this magical things (even if they never explicitly claim it). Like NordVPN (you probably know what I mean if you use e.g. twitch in the EU ;=) ).
So no point in competing for this users without doing things like a ad powered free plan, free testing month, and tons of dark-ish patterns.
Instead mullvad has I think a good idea about what works with their customers.
I think it still will cost them money (who hasn't forgotten to cancel and abo) but also might save them money (not having to handle anything in support related to subscriptions going wrong). And maybe with things like people pre-paying for a year, but stop using it after a few month it will also not cost them anything. Really hard to say. I mean it was also guaranteed to end up on HN, so free advertisement to exactly the right audience. That's worth some money, too.
I agree, this is precisely why they're doing this. Putting their customers' privacy over their investors' wallets. This is a big ballsy move IMO. They're buying a lot of goodwill here. And taking a risk.
> Also mainstream only cares about VPNs because they believe it does magically things, like somehow better protecting all your privacy even if you are logged into Facebook or somehow making account hijacking or banking scams less likely :/
Also totally agreed lol. I often get questions from friends about VPNs. Always have to explain that privacy really doesn't work if you willingly give up your data :)
And no I don't use Twitch so not sure what you mean there, sounds like an interesting story.
> So no point in competing for this users without doing things like a ad powered free plan, free testing month, and tons of dark-ish patterns. Instead mullvad has I think a good idea about what works with their customers.
Exactly. They're not doing a tunnelbear.
> I think it still will cost them money (who hasn't forgotten to cancel and abo) but also might save them money (not having to handle anything in support related to subscriptions going wrong). And maybe with things like people pre-paying for a year, but stop using it after a few month it will also not cost them anything. Really hard to say. I mean it was also guaranteed to end up on HN, so free advertisement to exactly the right audience. That's worth some money, too.
I agree it's ballsy, this makes me respect the gesture even more. It's not the 'done thing' in this day and age. But they're still doing it and for the right reason.
Too easy and lazy to blame this on some grand conspiracy. Reality is much more complicated, and cuts to heart of human behavior.
I think part of this is the free market which only really works on "MORE". More turnover, more customers, more products YoY. If you make a loss or invest in something for the common good a company isn't just frowned upon, they are putting themselves at liability of due diligence lawsuits. Most of the societal and environmental problems we are seeing stem from this, in my opinion. We need to fix the system before it's too late, not pamper to it.
I don't think there is a dark "SPECTRE" style gathering going on at Davos, no. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. However I do see there is zero incentive to improving the status quo if it doesn't make some rich people much richer yet again. This is why I see the WEF as a 'bad' entity, for promoting such things which are clearly undesirable. It's a very one-sided image.
For me as a tinkerer and maker the idea of renting my stuff and not being allowed to improve or repair it, is absolutely unthinkable and something that must be fought tooth and nail.
If i have to pre-pay service, while i can still pay on per-month basis, that is usually such inconvenience that i would rather pay per-year or longer.
Considering privacy issues i assume that pre-paid account could not be cancelled and refunded earlier, i am implicitly forced to year-long contract with pay ahead.
People dont forget to renew their world of warcraft membership because their game stops working if they do. if you use a VPN, you likely use it every day, and there will be no lost revenue.
https://help.audible.com/s/article/do-i-keep-my-credits-if-i...
Do I keep my credits if I cancel my Audible Premium Plus membership? No. If you end your Audible Premium Plus membership, your credits will be lost with your other membership benefits.
This and other privacy-related issues (see my comment history) is why I won’t consciously use Amazon again.
Mulvad is awesome and super fast. I reliably get in excess of 300mbps while torrenting.
I hope Mullvad keeps on its current course. It's one of the most respectable companies right now, with a respectable product, and its one of the few I care to pay for on a consistent basis.
1. https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2022/1/12/diskless-infrastructur...
AIUI, Bahnhof and other VPN providers stay in the clear by avoiding storage of data in the first place. They can be compelled to hand over any data they have, but not to log any additional data. (ISPs etc are forced to log more data IIRC.)
At least there's nothing like the Australian laws for forcing and gagging developers.
Actually I'm not so sure that's true. I'm pretty sure similar gag orders have been mentioned in episodes of P1's Gräns. Might want to double check that...
The AABill introduced warrants that can be handed down without judicial oversight that compel the recipient (individual or institution) to grant (or, critically, develop the means to grant) read access to any system to the government; while simultaneously acting as a gag order preventing disclosure of the warrant's existence. Violating this gag order would incur jail time.
The IDBill introduced warrants that allow the government to "disrupt data by modifying, adding, copying or deleting data in order to frustrate the commission of serious offences online" and further allows them to impersonate the online profiles of a person deemed significant to a criminal investigation.
Both of these bills were rushed through parliament with minimal opportunity for public comment. Where public comment (from the legal, tech, and human rights arenas) was made, it was universally negative. We have just ousted the government that drove these bills, but the new government (supposedly considerably more left leaning) supported both these bills with minimal opposition and has made no public plans to repeal or amend this legislation.
A previous Prime Minister once said (not in regards to these particular laws): “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”
[1] Assistance and Access Bill (2018): https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
[2] Identify and Disrupt Bill (2021): https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
This should or should not tell you enough...
Also it seems all I need to do as an "attacker" is subpoena (or whatever the Swedish equivalent is) Mullvad while your payment record is on file and I get the info I want. If Mullvad really wanted to go hardcore why not only sell little top up cards cash-only at kiosks?
Now, choosing where you want your traffic to geographically egress onto the public network does have marginal utility and it's a perfectly sane feature for VPN providers to market and consumers to pay for--VPNs aren't useless. It's just not privacy.
EDIT: add bit about how Mullvad is your new ISP to clarify the point
being private from your local ISP is what 99% of people care about because they use VPNs to send copyright infringement claims to /dev/null and watch netflix, not to smuggle nuclear secrets to Iran. It's privacy in a practical sense that's useful to people. If I go from an untrustworthy ISP to a trustworthy one I've gained privacy, there's no need to be overly academic about the term.
And breaking the internet? I think centralisation by parties like Amazon, Google, CloudFlare does that a lot more.
And if you want you can even send them cash in an envelope. Or monero or whatever.
> And if you want you can even send them cash in an envelope. Or monero or whatever.
So why not only allow payments in privacy perfect currency if they're so concerned about privacy?
But the reality is that it does work for a variety of usecases. Try to torrent in Germany (of all places) and you'll get blackmail letters from random lawyers. Do this with a VPN and no problem.
For this scenario it's the tool for the job. If you're an insurgent trying to liberate Iran it's not.
For general surfing privacy it doesn't add much value at all because most of the identifying information is in the session itself, not the IP. This is where the layered approach comes in.
But I definitely see a value in these services.
And they do offer many anonymous payment options, but some are heavily frowned upon in some regions (eg anonymous crypto in India) and mailing bills is inconvenient and risky. And I guess for some people it's worth the tradeoff.
Otherwise sounds like we mostly agree.
Beyond location, did you know there are services that can sometimes accurately provide a users place of work based on home IP? Their likely income level, and more. That becomes impossible with a VPN.
In short a VPN removes a key personal identifier that can be used to ID you online. Your IP address.
Because perfect is the enemy of good. Mulvad would lose customers and that is not good for Mulvad, nor for the customer.
Bit of a contradiction there. It adds friction to at least some attacks against your privacy. That's better privacy.
Nothing will ever be perfect, and VPNs can easily be oversold in terms of their benefits (especially since https became the norm). But they have benefits in some common use-cases.
> Also it seems all I need to do as an "attacker" is subpoena (or whatever the Swedish equivalent is) Mullvad while your payment record is on file and I get the info I want. If Mullvad really wanted to go hardcore why not only sell little top up cards cash-only at kiosks?
They accept cash and at least some other privacy preserving payment methods already.
So why even allow "traditional" KYC-ridden payments at all?
> Bit of a contradiction there. It adds friction to at least some attacks against your privacy. That's better privacy.
The nuance is that you're just moving the problem. You're not private from Mullvad. You're just trading one ISP for a different one. I could have phrased it better in my initial comment so as not to suggest a contradiction. Think of it this way, if Mullvad was your ISP, would you still tell someone to get a VPN? You have to trust someone not to snoop on your DNS queries and connections. All adding a VPN does is give you more freedom to choose who to trust, which is not bad in its own right. It's just not technically privacy manifest.
Another way of saying that is that you've gained a choice. Most people have essentially one option for an ISP, but _many_ for VPNs.
> So why even allow "traditional" KYC-ridden payments at all?
To allow user choice. Many probably don't really care about that aspect and just want to bypass region-locks.
I feel like if the bandwidth used by content distribution really mattered, we'd see a lot more effort being put into multicasting. Even a basic stateless "multiple destination IPs" version could save so much bandwidth.
Just turn off javascript and/or images.
I will admit that I know absolutely nothing of the Swedish legal system.
There are certain specific things that I would want always to auto renew (like domain names, hosting related stuff etc)
If I ever get round to building a subscription SaaS I might consider “off by default” auto-renewal and leave it to customers to turn it on if want it… though this does add a bit of complexity I guess.
[0]: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/firefox-rolls-o...
However, there are two cases where they are useful: - IP address hiding (something like iCloud Private Relay for iOS/Mac users does this at the browser level, VPN brings it to the entire system) - Legal protections - Location simulation
If you want to hide your IP address, this could be to stay more anonymous and less trackable, any system that relays your connection is fine.
If you want to break the law, you'll need something that has safeguards in place against that. Most VPNs do the most they can within the legal limits here.
If you want to simulate your location, you'll need a VPN with servers in those locations.
---
So really, it just depends on what "real privacy" means to you.
Free tiers provided by various "cloud" services work fine for this one (Oracle is the most generous among them).
Nah. As Europeans we're getting more and more censorship. Just think that most Russian news outlets have been blocked, youtube channels and so on. Plus until recently I couldn't read a good chunk of US news due to them refusing to adapt to GDPR.
But here they make privacy more important than pleasing the investors. Kudos. Glad I'm a customer.
And of course there are many countries completely outside of SEPA.
It absolutely is not. The only time I've seen a check was a gift from my grandfather in the 00s, and I don't think paying bills by mailing checks was ever a thing here.
Checks also often become very difficult and expensive to cash when going cross-border. E.g. most banks here (Finland) refuse to cash foreign checks altogether.
I've noticed this is not really a Mullvad specific issue, as the same thing happens when i apply their "killswitch" config (= pfctl firewall rules under the hood) while using other VPN services, like ProtonVPN.
Apple seems to be blocking some of the proxy ip's or some iCloud service process is misbehaving somehow.
This portable secure travel router supports MullVad (and Azire-VPN) out of the box:
https://www.amazon.com/GL-iNet-GL-MT1300-Wireless-Pocket-Siz...
Just input your Mullvad account number and it will upload all WireGuard configurations for all MullVad servers worldwide automatically.
Perfect to use to connect to any unsecure Wi-Fi and drive all traffic via VPN in hotels, airports, coffee shops, etc...
It can connect directly via ethernet cable or broadcast it's own WiFi SSID's to which you can connect.
You configure it to always connect to VPN of your choice using OpenVPN or WireGuard protocols.
Then you may connect to this device SSID and your traffic always be routed via VPN connection. This is way better, secure and more reliable than "VPN software" or "VPN apps" solutions.
Not sure if i answered your question?
I've been running a similar setup for a couple years now. It's been great.
or $90 on GL.iNet GL-AX1800 Wifi-6 router with MullVad support preconfigured.
Nothing to install, tweak or have hassles with.
Is there an easy way for regular consumers to set up recurring payments in a "push" configuration (i.e. from my bank to someone else's) rather than "pull" configuration (i.e. most subscriptions where the service charges a credit card on an interval)?
I split a T-Mobile multi-line plan with a few friends where I'm the payer, and I remember looking into this a while back to help them pay their share on time and without hassle, but coming up empty.
Feels like it would be useful for paying for something like Mullvad too, but I feel like there are benefits to that model that reaches beyond the individual use cases I mentioned.
It'd allow me to manage money going out of my account from 1 centralized location, making money flow more predictable and less chaotic than the status quo where a random amount of money is pulled out of my account from various credit cards every month, and I have to log into each account separately to figure out how much.
No - there’s no way to support all the anti fraud mechanisms of the major credit card networks without a thorough paper trail. Masked card services help prevent unwanted charges and inconvenience for the customer - they may give a fleeting layer of privacy between the consumer and the merchant but nothing more than that.
I wish more services supported this, but I understand it adds a lot of hassle for them as well.
I don't know what the rules are for sellers that are inside the EU, but if they are at all like the rules for sellers outside the EU selling to buyers in the EU they are required to collect two pieces of evidence that support their determination of which country's VAT to collect.
Where I work we use the country the person claims they are in from the country drop down on our cart and what country MaxMind says their IP address is from. This works most of the time. If those don't match we look up the first 6 digits of their credit card to see what bank issued it and see what country that bank is in, and if that matches either their selected country or the IP country we go with that. If the bank is in a third country, we look at their email address and if that is at a service that is mostly just serving one of the three countries we go with that.
How would a company that accepts cash and keeps very minimal customer information deal with this?
I am not for it. Just the way the lands lie right now.
VPNs don't mean shit. You're leaking data everywhere you go. Browser fingerprinting, WiFi/BT signals, cell tower signals, GPS. If you own a smart phone and a credit card you're already fucked.
Let's not confuse things for people by making them think if they plop a 5 Euro VPN between them and their yahoo! email account that this does anything at all to deter state level actors.
VPNs are good for a few things:
(1) Evading state-sponsored censorship (which uses technology minted in good old Silicon Valley) -- where the state doesn't really care unless you're really bothering them
(2) Marginally disrupting the pan-opticon that is surveillance capitalism by mixing the signals a bit, where your ISP can't sell you out to data brokers. But even then... DNS leaks, etc still happen and still fuck with the plan.
(3) Maybe not getting scooped up as badly in the state dragnet, and maybe not being accused of something you actually didn't have anything to do with.
But brother, if you think you're gonna be the next Ross Ulbrich with your Mullvad VPN, then you better be memorizing your recipe for toilet wine because you're gonna land in a fed pen.
A VPN headquarted offshore that will only respond to local subpoenas with local legal representation is pretty good protection against the second two.
https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mullvad-revi...
If the Swedish courts find sufficient reason to do so, they will go in without warning and seize what they feel like.
Its almost the same in terms of privacy protections.
Now, I totally understand that letting people pause with super fine temporal resolution would crush their business model. I'm not asking for that. But I would like to buy say 30 months of service, flick a switch draining say one month of my credit (and having the service for a month), then pausing again.
I wish more companies had this attitude.
They seem to never actually associate the account number with any payments except at the moment the account gains time. This keeps them from having to respond to any legal demands with useful data.
I wonder if the iOS subscriptions are affected. Technically they could just not associate your payment with your account number. Then the app can submit the transaction ID and your account number that was stored locally to the service to extend your time.
Someone will know that Mr Smith has a mulvad VPN subscription. They just won't know his username on the service.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenization_(data_security) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-shredding
They also mentioned it's about less data, not about zero data. The moment you use a credit card, of course it's stored in a bunch of places. But this won't be stored with them.
This decision makes me like them even more.
Given the relative volatility I'd be surprised if they have any meaningful long term holding of cryptocurrency.
Why would you ever want to do that?
They could be safe against adversary that has access to Mullvad data, while still offering convenience of subscriptions. It is not safe against adversary that has access to banking data, but even independent payments are not safe against that adversary, if they are often enough.
But I think it's a bit overkill to completely remove the subscription option. They could have accomplished the same educating of end users with a simple recommendation or opt-out at sign up.
Still providing subscription for those users who find that most convenient.
Note: I'm not considering ProtonMail (Switzerland) as relatively cheap. I came to know about CTemplar (Iceland), but that shutdown a month ago.
Also, the Swedish government can't compel Mullvad to divulge information that it doesn't have.
Especially strong decision since this will certainly cost them a lot of revenue and I don't think the boost in reputation will counter that in the long run.
What'll happen. I suppose there is a "middle" group of users who want a VPN a bit but not super much, and long term now might leave
Anyway I like Mullvad's mindset
Hi Mullvad, I hope you'll post a follow-up a year later :-)
What if you, as part of the payment flow, included adding a calendar reminder X months later
I mean, maybe they won't be affected by this but they sort of suggest after a few weeks you could dispute the charge and they would have no idea it was you.
https://mullvad.net/en/help/no-logging-data-policy/#payments
Maybe that is fine, just a cost of doing business for them. But it is definitely atypical. Never heard of someone who would be completely unable to respond to disputes before.
One thought is that their offering is so uniform that they could provide the same information in response to every request, regardless of days passed since the transaction. They would only need to mark pre- and post- certain changes to terms and screens, which they could record without keeping identifying information.
They may also be using Stripe’s chargeback insurance, which relieves the need for the merchant to respond at all.
- ProtonVPN - Mullvad - IVPN
More details here on why: https://www.privacyguides.org/vpn
I personally picked Mullvad even though i use Proton Mail because they have a fully featured Linux app, unlike Proton's which is very very basic and they support IPv6.
So they hold your info and link for however long the chargeback period is (or the average one, probably 30-60 days is fine) and then lose it.
If you're more worried about privacy than convenience they offer other payment methods:
Which payment methods do you accept? We accept cash, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, bank wire, credit card, PayPal, Swish, Giropay, Eps transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL, and Przelewy24.
https://mullvad.net/en/pricing/
And you can pay for a decade in advance.
(What is Pretzel24 I wonder?)
"przelewy" means "wire transfers" in Polish: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/przelew Nothing to do with pretzels. :)
Also, they do actually keep a link for 40 days, but it seems like some card card networks allow chargebacks past that.
Perhaps a better model is the client stores the necessary data, and presents it when trying to connect?
If Eve can determine the basis for which an account is identified, and there is a small number of subscriptions,[1] then the namespace may be exhaustively searched.
Mind that even if the resulting hash space is large, if the key space is small, the search is tractable. Just look for a resulting valid hash.
Even if a payment is required, if $0.01 is accepted, the cost for testing 1 million keys is $10,000. For a sufficiently high-value target, potentially reasonable. More so if you can create your own money.
________________________________
Notes:
1. For computers, any value < 10 billion is arguably small, and quite possibly somewhat larger than that. The present human population is < 10 billion. The Mulvad subscription list is all but certainly <<<10 billion, where '<<<' -> "very much smaller than".
All the ways I come up with (giving out keys) have the problem of how do you renew the key, and how do you cancel it, without knowing which is which.
e.g.
1. Connect to Mullvad over Tor, authenticate with real-world user ID
2. Use this to sign a blinded token
3. Use this to connect to Mullvad anonymously after some delay
The first run would be kind of dodgy, but after that you could get new session keys on a fixed schedule and switch them out at a random interval.
If they see that user A authenticates and 10 minutes later, key A comes online, that can be traced, but if you then wait a week, authorize key B, and then wait a few more days to start using it, you should be good.
In practice, this has way too many issues to work in practice. It still requires you to trust them not to e.g. log IPs and correlate it that way, so it's all just snake oil.
I’ve funded some virgin addresses from Tornado Cash notes, running from my own local node
Thats sufficient and definitely less cumbersome than Monero.
" Which payment methods do you accept? We accept cash, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Monero, bank wire, credit card, PayPal, Swish, Giropay, Eps transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL, and Przelewy24. "
also Cash
"Can I really pay with cash? You bet, and please! Stay anonymous all the way. Just put your cash and payment token (randomly generated on our website) in an envelope and send it to us. We accept the following currencies: EUR, USD, GBP, SEK, DKK, NOK, CHF, CAD, AUD, NZD. "
With virgin addresses I can get bitcoin and monero (or anything incl cash) anonymously from the tornado cash notes via the bridges, or via exchanges and staying below KYC limits
But Tornado Cash notes decrypt only to EVMs where Tornado Cash is deployed. It would be more convenient for Ether and some ERC20 tokens to also be used directly, instead of bridges or exchanges.
Are you all beholden to a specific payment processor or implementation? People pay the most to use Ethereum for over half a decade now, which is best projection we have for activity and potential interest in merchants that aren't crypto native services.
Refreshing and definitely a good reason to switch.
Not sure why a savvy someone would use a subscription with a VPN, so not sure what the news is here.
Also, I find that using bullet points helps to visualize the sentences better, especially when used hierarchically.
Having to think about paying a bill every month is really a pain to me. I get the privacy ideals, but the tradeoffs are not ridiculous. I should be able to make a decision about how private I want to be, not have Mullvad decide for me so that they can feel better about themselves.
I will probably move over to Mozilla VPN now, since they will continue to rely on Mullvad for their infrastructure but allow me to pay them in a convenient way. I guess compromises are in order.
Others can correct me, but I believe each payment just adds a month of time to your balance. So a number of months can be added at once.
1) it doesn't cost mullvad very much to not autorenew subscriptions. People dont forget to renew their subscriptions to a service that breaks your connection to youtube when you forget to pay. It's closer to the world of warcraft model.
2) Customers are now rightfully wary of renewing subscriptions. Given horror stories of how difficult it is to cancel your subscription to a service, I suspect that you lose upwards of 50% of potential customers if you only offer subscription models.
3) No VPN has any incentive at all to "protect your privacy". It is perfectly legal for them to lie to you about not keeping logs and then turn them over to state actors, provided they are operating out of the right state. In fact, state actors would encourage such a thing. Perhaps some of these VPNs do something to protect your privacy, but it is not because they are incentivized to.
I might be in a tiny minority of users (genuinely not sure) but I only enable my VPN when I want to get around IP geolocation (e.g. to stream something only available in another country) and otherwise turn it off when I'm done to minimize latency. I sometimes go a week or two without using it so I could easily not notice at least for days if my subscription didn't autorenew.
4) It is probably state funded and run by the CIA.