this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2024
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EDIT: Thank you all for your help, I guess I'll have to keep changing location, filling captcha and occasionally allow an exception. Keeping ones internet activity even remotely private requires effort, even with good tools.

Hi,

After reading time and again about how Mullvad VPN is the best VPN out there, I decided to give it a try and got myself an account & credit for a month worth of trial.

However after a couple days of use on my mobile (I also use Mullvad Browser), I'm getting bounced from many mainstream website.

Is this normal? Any settings I should adjust?

Cheers

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago

I get blocked from Google and reddit on Mullvad, but I see that as a Google and reddit problem, not a Mullvad problem lol.

[–] RmDebArc_5 27 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don’t no which websites you are talking about, but a bunch of websites (looking at you Reddit) block VPNs based on ip. Your only option is changing server until you find one that isn’t blocked or using Tor

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Life Hack: Replace the 'www' part from the URL with 'sh'. For example: replace

www.reddit.com/post1/...

with

sh.reddit.com/post1/...

It should be easy to write a script that replaces these URLs. This allows using reddit with my VPN (Mullvad) turned on. I don't know why reddit offers such a workaround, but it works for me.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago

It allows using reddit with my VPN (Mullvad) turned on. I don't know why reddit offers such a workaround, but it works for me

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You forgot to explain what this does?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It allows using reddit with my VPN (Mullvad) turned on. I don't know why reddit offers such a workaround, but it works for me

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Thx for confirming! Sounds good.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm having the same issue, and like others have said, using frontends Is a nice solution. However, they can be hard up remember. I searched for an extension to automate it, and found this. Seems awesome. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/libredirect/

[–] yonder 3 points 3 days ago

Yeah, libredirect is awesome. It's useful even if I remember all the frontends, since it means even embedded and linked videos use whatever frontend I want in the case of Youtube.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

That's a great name for an extension

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Not Mullvad's fault, they're just on some of the used blocklists. Not really much you can do about it besides finding a not yet blocked servers.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nope, pretty normal. You'll find that you'll need frontends and proxies for tons of things. For example Instagram hasn't ever worked for me with a VPN. I no longer have an account anyway,, but for the times someone sends me a link I've had to find sites that let you view the content without actually visiting Instagram. Same with reddit, reddit frontends are very good these days (I'd recommend any Redlib instance). Also, sometimes a specific VPN server is IP blocked and you can just connect to a different server to view a web site that blocked you initially. It is a fair amount of work, but honestly its helped me slow down my consumption of random bullshit anyway haha. I use ProtonVPN and pay for premium.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Interestingly, I use Instagram with Mullvad for over a year now, both app and web. Reddit seems to be working fine too. Maybe that's because I opened accounts without a VPN.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago (1 children)

In my years of using mullvad (before they took away port forwarding) I found probably half a dozen websites that blocked me based on that but it may be more common now. Often I found it was easy to get around it using Tor. Some of the smaller and better-run sites might fix the problem if you report it to them through the proper channels.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Which do you use now? I know a lot of VPNs don’t support port forwarding.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Currently on Azire. There aren't many left and I wanted to support one of the slightly less well-known ones. It works well enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Azire looks great ! I'm interested on why you choose azire over protonVPN?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Aside from not wanting to rely on the same one as everyone else in the world, setting up port forwarding on proton looks unreasonably complicated.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You'll find that with any major VPN. The IP addresses they use to proxy your traffic eventually get flagged and blocked by lots of major players. Which is why VPN companies cycle through them quite often. As others have said, you'll either need to switch servers (and thus ips) or figure out another path.

I don't use mull but most have a way to exclude a given url or site from the tunnel if you need it. i.e. the site will work for you but it's coming from your own IP and unencrypted.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Express VPN is pretty good at not getting blocked but you pay a fair premium for their service.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Its owned by Kape technologies - a former malware distributor that operates in Israel:

https://x.com/Snowden/status/1438291654239215619

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

I allow override and on occasion allow the override. I use it like no script. If it needs modification I ask myself how motivated I am to see it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

I have Mullvad running all the time, and I've had this issue with one unpopular app and one online store website.

What's really bad is the number of captchas 🤖

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

yes, every damn website. changing server to another country may help. i noticed ireland is pretty immune to this but that server is down quite often.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Try Tor maybe? Although it's not very fast...