- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
I switched to windscribe last month because the proton CEO starting spewing politcal BS, and I wanted port forwarding that wasn’t locked behind a shitty GUI.
As far as I was concerned setup was super easy, the VPN speeds were great, and port forwarding worked really nicely. The whole price for a fixed server and port forward, + unlimited data was a bit much (at $95/year) but for the ease of use and speeds I was getting, I was happy to stick with them.
My setup is a always-on server with a 1gbps connection, where yes, I fucking seed my shit, all of it. I have about 30TB of linux ISOs and counting, and it’s rare that my combined upload speed is less than 1MBps, ever.
Which lead me to getting banned from windscribe with no notice or warning in the middle of last week. This lead to me having to spend tracker points to avoid HnR, and i’m also unable to grab any new ISOs until I find a new VPN provider that won’t ban me for actually using the service full time.
I did shoot them an email (after talking’ with their AI bot first), and they were actually helpful enough. The offered to restore support, so long as I promised to not torrent with them again (which, I honestly did promise not to. I’m not sticking with a VPN service that can’t handle me actually using it for what it’s advertised for) and they did unban the account. Whole email chain took about three days to get resolved.
My sticking point is that they still have instructions on setting up torrents on their own website, and that they specifically allow for unlimited data (with the plan i paid for) so long as it’s just one user. I did not break those rules. After clarifying that in the support email, they still said that I was using too much data (despite the unlimited data advertisement) and that torrenting was not allowed on their service.
TL:DR: Windscribe bans you if you use a lot of data, and support says torrents aren’t allowed, despite their website advertising such. Proof in the attached images.
If y’all have any other suggestions for a VPN that allow port forwarding i’d really appreciate it.
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I think you should give surfshark a go I’ve been using it for over a year every day all day and it’s flawless.
Their own website says they allow p2p so I would see what your options are for getting a refund. If you purchased with a credit card, file a chargeback and include the documentation.
It’s definitely a bandwidth usage thing, given their reputation for being informal in communications they could have been a lot nicer about that.
It’s really disappointing to see this from them, they were one the best priced VPNs out there claiming to respect privacy. Their support was also super helpful with my questions about their datacenter static IPs.
Since y’all probably know more about VPNs than me, is Mullvad any good? I bought them to use for torrents, though haven’t tried seeding anything yet. I assume they’re good with that?
Also, anyone know if they’re run by MAGA creeps?
Mullvad are Swedish and the most privacy respecting out there, so that’s an excellent choice.
I second this, Mullvad is awesome, and after trying Windscribe, NordVPN, and ProtonVPN, I ended up switching to Mullvad a few weeks ago and I haven’t looked back.
They are who I use, never heard of anything fishy with them.
The fact that you can pay by mailing in cash is pretty cool.
proton CEO starting spewing politcal BS
Context, please?
What started it I think is this twitter post praising trump and the republican party: https://xcancel.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660
He later doubled down on it (if I recall correctly) and the company has generally been making some highly questionable decisions since
Alright, have you actually read his tweet?
I know you just linked it, but have you actually read it, the context, and given it some thought?
Sure you can look at it as just a bit of politicking (if a poorly thought out one), but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Proton hasn’t done anything that clearly crosses an unacceptable line, but they’ve made a lot of other highly questionable decisions in a relatively short timespan
oh, actually now that I looked it up closer, starting about 9 months ago they did a foot in the door manuever (a survey with leading questions followed up by misrepresenting the results) and then aggressively pushed an AI service that, you guessed it, tries to read all the emails you write and receive, totally undermining the end-to-end encryption. (the claim is it works locally, but most users have their data processed on the proton servers unencrypted)
And the way they did it is straight out of the enshittification playbook where they first promise that it’s “business only” and then later try to push it to all users, and claiming it’s off by default while it’s actually on by defaulthttps://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/07/18/proton-mail-goes-ai-security-focused-userbase-goes-what-on-earth/
(this article only covers the early portion of the debacle)
this isn’t even all the problems with proton either, though all the other things are pretty minor by comparison (eg. quitting mastodon “because it’s too expensive to maintain” (?))
aggressively pushed an AI service that, you guessed it, tries to read all the emails you write (…) (this article only covers the early portion of the debacle)
Did you actually read it, though?
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They claim to respect privacy and - to date - have done nothing to suggest that they don’t.
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It’s running on European-run Mistral.ai, which is subject to all the standard GDPR rules.
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IT’S OPTIONAL (there goes the “aggressive push” bit)
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NOTHING EXCEPT FOR THE PROMPT IS SENT TO MISTRAL (there goes the “reads all emails” bit)
I get it. People see “AI” and immediately panic. But it doesn’t seem like the panic HERE makes any sense at all.
quitting mastodon “because it’s too expensive to maintain”
I’d say having to either pay a guy to maintain the account or pay for software that allows cross-posting to both Twitter and Mastodon (with both having different limitations) gets expensive if you realise that they were getting minuscule engagement on Mastodon. It’s a shit move, but I get where they’re coming from. Same reason why Garuda Linux has a subreddit, but not a Lemmy Community.
but they’ve made a lot of other highly questionable decisions in a relatively short timespan
Nothing you’ve shown me so far is anywhere near the point where I’d be suspicious of them.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying they’re the end-all-be-all of privacy oriented services. There’s a bunch of stuff they do wrong (especially with how they farm engagement on their TT account), but as far as privacy and security themselves? I’ve yet to see an issue.
- They claim to respect privacy and - to date - have done nothing to suggest that they don’t.
If you ignore all the fast and loose they play with privacy, sure, there is “nothing to suggest” they don’t respect it.
IT’S OPTIONAL (there goes the “aggressive push” bit)
It’s not an aggressive push if you ignore the part where they repeatedly use the foot in the door technique where they first promise they won’t do something, and then later do it anyways.
They claim it is optional but they just shove a pop-up in your face about AI, while misleading you about how it works. This is about 1 step away from how most companies “allow” you to “preserve your privacy” by carefully clicking “no” to a long list of popups suggesting you give them cookies and share your emails etc.
This may be easy to dismiss as “problem between keyboard and chair” but when it predictably leads to many users thinking it’s off but being surprised when they find it turned on without them realizing it it’s not much consolation
NOTHING EXCEPT FOR THE PROMPT IS SENT TO MISTRAL (there goes the “reads all emails” bit)
How do you figure that works? The server somehow corrects your spelling mistakes without reading the email containing the spelling mistake? Again, End-to-end encryption is a core advertised feature of protonmail, and this completely sidesteps it while actively misleading users into thinking it doesn’t
If you ignore all the fast and loose they play with privacy, sure
I’m not ignoring it, I just never heard about it. Got some articles/examples?
It’s not an aggressive push if you ignore the part where they repeatedly use the foot in the door technique where they first promise they won’t do something, and then later do it anyways.
Can’t comment because I haven’t seen the original announcement. Are you sure it wasn’t to the tune of “it will be available for Business” and then people extrapolated that to mean “it will never, ever, ever-ever even remotely touch the ‘civilian’ accounts”?
They claim it is optional but they just shove a pop-up in your face about AI
Ah, yes, recommending new features, the Hitler of XXI c’s IT.
Come on now…
while misleading you about how it works
Please elaborate.
it predictably leads to many users thinking it’s off but being surprised when they find it turned on without them realizing it it’s not much consolation
I mean… Yeah, they added the button instead of having the user toggle a switch for the button to appear. But, as I’m reading it, it’s not the feature that is “on” or “off” in the sense that you seem to see it. It’s not “‘on’, therefore it’s doing something behind the scenes”. It’s “on” as in: “the button is visible, and if you click it, you can start interacting with it, but it does nothing unless you tell it to do something”. I may be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t discount the entire company on the basis of a Reddit comment.
How do you figure that works? The server somehow corrects your spelling mistakes without reading the email containing the spelling mistake?
If you ask Scribe to correct spelling mistakes, then the prompt contains the email you asked it to correct, that seems fairly obvious. It doesn’t, however, “read your mailbox”, because it can’t.
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You know that isn’t op, right?
Umm… Yes? What’s that got to do with anything?
Goddamnit, I just made an email with them, trying to get out of google’s monopoly. Does anyone know an email service that doesn’t suck?
Posteo, but also this question is asked every week on lemmy.
The most popular alternative seems to be tutanota, though there should be a lot of alternatives though they may be very niche
(it seems tuta has some technical limitations if you want to do automated emailing, and the UI is a bit clunky, but it’s not a privacy or security problem)
The whole “scandal” is bullshit.
Look at the linked tweet, mate. Trump appointed Gil Slater as Assistant Attorney General or the Antitrust Division.
Slater was known for being anti-Big Tech.
Yen is famously anti-Big Tech.
He calls the appointment a good choice.
That’s it. He doesn’t say “Trump is great”, he doesn’t say ANYTHING about Trump himself, he just comments that “appointing this person (who we know is anti-Big Tech) to a high position in the Antitrust Division is a good choice”.
But since we live in the world where saying “Trump, maybe, potentially, accidentally did something good” means you’re in a cult because you didn’t call to hang him for everything he does, we are where we are.
He says Trump supports the little guy and prefers him to democrats who he says are the party of big business.
I’m sorry you want to support people who support fascists.
He says Trump supports the little guy
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Not “Trump” but “Republicans”, via the “tables have turned”.
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Considering the actions of the Democrats at the time (viciously pro-Big Tech just on the basis of “let’s criticise everything Trump admin does”), and the actions of the Republicans at the time (last administration started a lot of the anti-trust moves against Big Tech), he’s right.
and prefers him to democrats
OK, quote that part of the tweet. I posted its entire content in another comment in this thread.
he says are the party of big business.
He’s right. They vehemently criticised all the anti-Big Tech actions from the Trump admin during his previous term.
I’m sorry you want to support people who support fascists.
I’m sorry your fundamentalism blinds to simple English.
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He literally said that they are now the party of the little guys. That’s what “the tables have turned” means. That says a lot about how he feels about Trump, and a lot about how much you can trust his judgement on anything.
Yeah, if you cut up his Tweet into single sentences and then read each one completely outside of any context, then you could argue that Andy Yen got brainwashed into being MAGA.
But that’s not how language works.
HERE’S the full Tweet. For your convenience, I’ll quote it in full:
Great pick by @realDonaldTrump. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned. People forget that the current antitrust actions against Big Tech were started under the first Trump admin.
Nothing he wrote here are lies. The antitrust actions against Big Tech were started by Trump’s administration. The whole thing about banning Tik-Tok was their idea.
Appointing someone who’s known to be “anti-Big Tech” to the second highest position in the Antitrust Division at the DOJ objectively sounds great and is a good move.
So, with the Dems fighting to stop Trump admin’s moves against Big Tech, the tables were turned at the point in time the Tweet was written - in 2024, before the inauguration and the swearing-in of Trump!
I’m assuming that if you asked Yen today what he thinks about Trump and his administration, he’d have a vastly different opinion. But calling him a “Trump supporter” based off of that tweet is just… either ignorance, or some silly form of fundamentalism.
Self hosting
That is in the back of my mind. God help me I may just do it.
Tailscale + mullvad integration works great if you want port forwarding and at about the same price as mullvad VPN.
How does this work??? I thought I wouldn’t be able to use Mullvad with port forwarding. Would I need to have a vps? Would the VPS not disallow me for connecting to VPN or detecting p2p traffic?
I would suggest looking up tailscales docs, its not massively complicated but I wouldn’t do the process justice.
But the short of it: signup with tailscale. Add tailscales software to each device. Then from tailscales admin panel go to setting, VPN, mullvad, setup payment then add up to 5 devices to use mullvad as an exit node.
What’s concerning to me is, how do they know what you use their services for if supposedly they don’t keep any logs. https://windscribe.com/privacy/ https://windscribe.com/features/no-identifying-logs/
There is a big difference between “not keeping logs” and “dont have a way to check what you are doing right now”.
No logs just means they can’t check what you did last week but they can always check the traffic you are producing in that moment. If they see traffic from a torrent protocol they know you are torrenting.
Edit: they do claim they do “No Monitoring” so yeah by their own words they should not be able to tell you are torrenting.
No Monitoring
We don’t monitor your activity and have no way of seeing what sites you are visiting. We do store when you last used Windscribe as well as the total amount of data used in a 30 day period (to enforce free account limitations and to prevent abuse).
It doesn’t take a genius to guess a forwarded port is used for torrenting though
It was submitted in the chat…
Like most any paid VPN service they need to track bandwidth usage somewhat. They can’t see what you’re accessing but they can see how much of whatever it is. Windscribe also offers a free 10gb/mo plan so they do track it for that purpose as well, much like any VPN with a free tier would.
Sure, they say that they monitor bandwidth usage but how do they know it was used for torrenting.
Because I told them I used torrents. Their FAQ literally has a page with instructions for setting up torrents. Still does. I didn’t think it’d be an issue for them.
You told them after getting banned so either they saw you were torrenting or gave you a bs explanation and banned you just for your data usage.
Probably the latter. Doesn’t matter which it is though; they advertise both on their website.
It’s probably pretty obvious when terabytes of upload are accrued over a few days like what OP mentioned, by seeding 24/7.
Ha!
My ISP sends me emails saying (paraphrased) “we’re only forwarding this email because we have to. We don’t track your data and your IP logs are wiped every 30 days. Your best option is not to respond because then they would know who you are.”
What ISP are you with?
The CEO of Windscribe is an Elon stan so you didn’t switch to a more left-leaning provider than Proton.
I suspect most CEOs are, The vast majority just have enough common sense not to ruin their relations with the 99 percenters.
Holy shit, you’re not lying. The literal first Post on his Twitter
I thought this was your Internet service provider. This is a VPN service? Holy shit what’s the point of a VPN with rules like this. Fuck em. I use proton and am looking to switch because the CEO is a right-winger but they don’t pull this shit.
Holy shit what’s the point of a VPN with rules like this.
Maybe I just want to pay $8 per month to change my Netflix (which I also pay $20 per month for) in order to watch different shows from another country. 👉👈
Does that even work? These companies know the IP ranges of many VPNs and block them.
I have no idea. I know back before I had sponsor block that seemed to be a common VPN influencer talking point.
I’ve seen a grand total of one influencer make a good argument for a VPN and that was Alan Fisher saying “have you observed your work skirting regulations that they shouldn’t be? Are you potentially reviewing legal materials on your work’s WiFi that your place of work might prefer you didn’t know about? To help avoid retaliation, you might need a VPN such as one from today’s sponsor…”
If your workplace lets you run a VPN on their device/network they’re probably not looking through your traffic
Blocking VPNs isn’t really possible. You can block known IP ranges but ultimately there’s so many ways to encapsulate and encrypt traffic that no solution is 100%. I have specifically worked at places in which those in management positions are interested in sniffing DNS queries to “see what people are up to on company time” and those happened to also be the employers that were doing sketchy things that may or may not have been legal
You could pay less for that stranger but understandable
I don’t pay for a VPN or Netflix lol
It was a comedic strawman
AirVPN (Eddie) has port forwarding. The interface isn’t very appealing and their website is meh, but it works and I got a great deal on a 3 year subscription.
Meh, switch to usenet. Download as much as you want, at max bandwidth 100% of the time, with 0 need for a vpn and no obligation to re-seed content for months on end.
Do you have a guide or something to get started? I’ve considered doing this a couple of times, but haven’t had the bandwidth to dig in and figure it out.
In short, you need three things: (here’s what I’ve been using)
An indexer: NZBgeek Just like a torrent indexer, but for .nzb files instead of .torrents
A provider: Frugal Usenet Where you’re downloading data from.
And a client: SabNZBD
When it comes to which provider to choose; pretty much all of them provide similar retention and unlimited data cap, so you really just need to look for something nearby. Often people will recommend having 2 providers one covered by DMCA and one covered by NTD to make content more available; but I’ve not really noticed a need.
Why would having a provider covered by the DMCA be a good thing (not offhand aware of NTD but I am guessing it is similar to the DMCA)? I have also been interested in trying Usenet, so thanks for sharing three examples of what to look for!
NTD is the European version of DMCA essentially.
It’s not a good thing; but usenet providers like any other internet service are generally subject to one or the other depending on their location, so it’s good to know which one covers the provider you use.
With providers spread across the globe, mirroring each others data, and subject to different copyright notice/takedown laws; the whole system is quite robust against removals. While you can send notices to individual providers, It’s extremely difficult to coordinate a global takedown effort and truly remove content from usenet as a whole.
That’s why multiple provider’s in different regions can be beneficial. Some people will buy ‘block’ accounts (a fixed amount of data to be used as needed, vs a monthly cap) for a provider in a separate region to fallback on when the data has been taken down from their local provider.
What does retention mean in this context? File retention? Is there any way to integrate with Kodi or other media server like debrid services?
Retention refers to how long a particular provider keeps the data users upload. 3-5k days is pretty typical, but there are some lower ones. Data is also mirrored across the backbones of all the different providers; so if it’s removed from one (due to retention or a takedown notice) it’s still available on others.
I’ve had little to no issue finding content, with 97% of data I’ve requested being available (stats from SabNZBD); but in the off chance you want something that is unavailable, most indexers have a requests section.
Similar to setting up torrenting, usenet indexers/clients can be added to the arr stacks for automation. I’m not sure about Kodi/Real Debrid as I don’t use those.
I don’t have a guide, but I knew nothing about it and it took me like 15-30 minutes total of googling and researching to set it all up.
Good on you! Usenet has been around for DECADES.
I don’t have a guide that’s modern. I’m just remembering how I used to connect in the 90s-2000s.
I use airvpn with an always on server setup, port forwarding, and constant seeding. If you’re okay with manually using a wireguard or openvpn client instead of an airvpn specific client it works great.
Edit Plus, they have a progressive pricing thing that lets you buy a few days for like 2€ just to test stuff.
AirVPN is perfect. Works flawlessy with gluetun, only thing the website is kinda outdated, but I can’t remember the last time I got on there so who cares
AirVPN!!! Its really great.
As a rule, the more outdated a service’s website is, the better the service is.
It’s funny that you mentioned this, because the crappy website is one of the things that sold me on it. It reminds me of the old internet.
It’s also surprisingly affordable, I got a 3 year subscription for something like $60. I was during a sale.
AirVPN seems really good, I liked Mullvad but unfortunately they dropped port forwarding which really ruined them as a VPN service for Torrenting.
Same here. Switched from Mullvad to AirVPN once they dropped port forwarding. I have had several issues with the Eddie client, but wound up dropping it in favor of gluetun and Wiresock with Wireguard configs and have had zero issues.
I switched to AirVPN about 6 months ago and I’ve been really happy with the service. Was previously using NordVPN, which was fine, but I was looking for a VPN provider that offered port forwarding and AirVPN does that. I don’t have hard stats on this, but I do feel that having access to port forwarding has improved my overall torrent speeds since switching.
Came to give AirVPN a shoutout too. Been with them since 7 years. Using both their client and native wireguard kernel module. Very happy.
Sounds like an all “you can eat” buffet with king crab legs that you never get because assholes keep taking them all whenever a new batch is put out. If it hasn’t devolved to that yet, then enjoy it while you can.
Air is actually good, but they don’t have a lot of fast servers. You are naturally limited by the server you choose and peering.
Windscribe encrypts your browsing activity, blocks ads, and unblocks entertainment content
so that was a lie
I think that refers to geoblocked content.
Agreed, but that’s also weird. Suddenly they’re the arbiter of what rules are okay to break and what aren’t? Sounds like they’re just trying to keep costs/traffic down.
Seems like something that could fit here
