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Mullvad and Tailscale Announce Partnership
(mullvad.net)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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I have the utmost respect and appreciation for mullvad but I don't need a vpn without port forwarding so I cancelled my sub. They are still objectively the vest vpn, this is the only sticking point.
What does port forwarding gain you on a VPN? Sorry if the question is ignorant
You need it for file sharing apps like BitTorrent or Soulseek, if you don't want to be seen as a leech, and/or you want to use private trackers where you need to maintain a good ratio. :)
Then you can just use a seed box on top of your downloading
Why would you use a seedbox if you have a home server? The home server can be the seedbox. A lot of homelabbers would have a good enough connection for it.
Edit: Using a VPN with port forwarding, of course.
Generally when you download files over torrent through your ISP, you end up getting love letters from rightsholders. I personally use a homelab NAS as my seedbox and for my public tracker stuff (as well as anime downloads over XDCC) I use Mullvad. I don't seed overly much on public trackers because of it, but my ratio on private trackers is sky high because ISPs won't send love letters for private trackers.
For the record, I'm pretty sure using Mullvad for XDCC is super overkill, but I wanted to have an excuse to break out userspace wireguard in a project and writing it all in Go made it so damn easy: https://github.com/Xe/x/commit/3d0647e946014516df33de0b18d2a16eec835bed
That's why you use a VPN that allows port forwarding.
It can still ruin your ping when downloading.
Not if you properly setup your limits... and symmetrical fiber has become much more common.
Most private trackers don't allow a shared VPN like Mullvad anyway. Some do but most don't.
Most private trackers don't allow you to browse the tracker site from a shared VPN, but I've never seen one that doesn't allow your torrent client to connect over one. That would make no sense.
I haven't personally seen a private tracker that blocks your actual bittorrent announces to the tracker with a VPN, though I know a couple prevent you from browsing the site itself with one.
From what I've read you need it for Bittorrent or at least the chance of failed downloads is higher without it.
Another use case (in addition to the BitTorrent use case) is if you want to host a site but hide your IP. You can run Nginx and configure it to listen on a port the VPN service has allocated to you. Good VPN services like AirVPN let you choose ports, and those ports are always allocated to you.
although people hosting illegal content using port forwarding is likely one of the reasons they removed it, so its a tricky problem
One of the main reasons people use VPNs is for illegal content... Port forwarding doesn't change that.
sure illegal content can be accessed over a vpn without port forwarding, but when someone is hosting a child porn site over a mullvad ip, that is clearly a larger problem
Yeah, I assume the kind of people that runs a VPN doesn't mind copyright infringement that much, but any sane person wouldn't like to contribute to the distribution of CSAM even if they are legally not doing anything wrong.
That's one of the main issues that criminals are more likely tonvalue privacy (for survival) than the average user that considers it a plus. And by criminal it can stretch from benign stuff like copyright infringement to being a hitman.
Yeah, unfortunately because of this decision from Mullvad, they also lost me as customer and I had to move to another.
It kinda sucks because I loved Mullvad. They had great servers, customer service, and I do like their Android & Linux program.
Did they change something? I've been port forwarding for a couple of years now.
They removed port forwarding back in July
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
I think it was something todo with CSAM hosting. It's shit but understandable to why they removed it
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised/
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/2/update-the-swedish-authorities-answered-our-protocol-request/
Well. That's what I get for using a service without giving them my email and not checking their blog.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/