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- cross-posted to:
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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’d recommend AirVPN. Here’s why I’d recommend them, in their own words:
No traffic limit. No time limit.
No maximum speed limit, it depends only on the server load
Every protocol is welcome, including p2p. Forwarded ports and DDNS to optimize your software.
Came to give AirVPN a shoutout too. Been with them since 7 years. Using both their client and native wireguard kernel module. Very happy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The CEO of Windscribe is an Elon stan so you didn’t switch to a more left-leaning provider than Proton.
Holy shit, you’re not lying. The literal first Post on his Twitter
I suspect most CEOs are, The vast majority just have enough common sense not to ruin their relations with the 99 percenters.
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?
Them calling it “unlimited” when there’s a limit is wrong, but so is using all of the available upload bandwidth 100% of the time on a cheap home VPN service when you consider the current market prices for data transfer. Mine’s limited to 2Mbps. Seems fair for $7/month or whatever it is.
Edit: Oh right it was 2Mbps. I spent 20 minutes surveying datacentre prices around the world to come up with that number, but bandwidth prices vary widely and might’ve changed by now.
Them calling it “unlimited” when there’s a limit is wrong, but so is using all of the available upload bandwidth 100% of the time on a cheap home VPN service when you consider the current market prices for data transfer. Mine’s limited to 2Mbps. Seems fair for $7/month or whatever it is.
they shouldn’t make it unlimited them, skill issue on their part.
If you’re selling me 1Gb networking speeds, with no bandwidth limit, it’s not my fault for using all of it lol. I’m just using what i pay for.
That’s technically within your legal rights I guess, just like (depending what the fine print says) it’s within their rights to throttle all your traffic one way or another to a low speed including the stuff you actually need to go faster. The places that always have low speeds for everyone are like that because they’re designed to cater to people who don’t give a shit about what their fair share might be and just want to max out their connection. Those services are fine for torrenting, useless for everything else. Windscribe isn’t one of those but it could become one if enough of its users think like you and insist on it.
Hopefully they’ll set a soft 2TB limit or something before they do that, though.
that’s true, but i would prefer they be upfront about it. If you’re advertising something, and i’m not getting it, that’s not great advertising.
If you’re telling me i get unlimited bandwidth on a 1gb connection, and you don’t give me that exact thing in return, it’s false advertising. Soft limit it if you want, just be honest about it. The solution here is a bandwidth limited plan, and one that isn’t.
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/
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.
It’s probably pretty obvious when terabytes of upload are accrued over a few days like what OP mentioned, by seeding 24/7.
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.
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…
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.
Look in to I2P
“Unlimited” isn’t a promise any provider can reasonably keep anyway. It’s bullshit—there’s always a limit. Always read the fine print and find out what the limit is to make sure it works for you before buying. If the limit isn’t stated now, it will be as soon as somebody really puts it to the test. Either that, or the company will go out of business, which will permanently limit your use of their services.
Not really. Unlimited means no data cap, not infinite bandwidth, and that’s perfectly reasonable to provide. Data isn’t a limited resource, the only thing that’s committed is the amount you can get right at that second.
Agreed that a monthly data cap is stupid for a VPN because to your point, your bandwidth and number of simultaneous connections are usually already limited, which effectively sets a monthly data cap, albeit a higher one than the average person is likely to need. Either way, you won’t be torrenting a petabyte for $5 per month. “Unlimited” is bullshit either way and it’s best to understand what the limits are and how they’re enforced.
Unlimited means no data cap, not infinite bandwidth
How is limited bandwidth not a data cap? When you multiply a bandwidth limit x the number of days, hours, minutes, etc in a month, it sure looks like a data cap to me.
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?
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.
You can’t forward ports on mullvad. You know if that matters to you. Airvpn and proton allow port forwarding.
We are swiftly reaching a time where boycotting companies run by people you disagree with will negatively impact your ability to function. Consider abandoning this type of purchasing in the future.
Username checks out
We are swiftly reaching a time where boycotting companies run by people you disagree with will negatively impact your ability to function. Consider abandoning this type of purchasing in the future.
Oh no please don’t boycott! The current boycotts are actually costing companies money and we can’t have people learning that boycotts can actually work!
We are swiftly reaching a time where boycotting companies run by people you disagree with will negatively impact your ability to function. Consider abandoning this type of purchasing in the future.
LOL
LMAO, even.
Boycotts are useful alongside militancy. The Montgomery bus boycott for example, was powerful because it gave an alternate path to resolve disputes that were playing out through marches and demonstrations that faced violent opposition.
Boycotts do not generally succeed at their aims if they are not accompanied by that militant wing.
I don’t know of any actions taken by proton that align with the ceos positions you oppose, for example: selective logging and reporting targeted at people in opposition to the trump government. I don’t know of any militant opposition or public demonstrations against those actions even if they did exist.
So I don’t think a boycott of proton would be effective at its goals even if they were explicit and achievable.
More broadly speaking, political action needs to be weighed against the negative repercussions it can bring; which is why in America, for example, lots of political demonstration tends to be younger people with less to lose.
When weighing that decision against having access to a privacy focused (if you don’t give them any identifying information) service, it may make more sense to abandon the boycott in order to get the service.
You could also just use airvpn, but it’s a little spartan and has a different feature set.
Anyway that was the whole point, that it’s easy to jump into an ineffective type of boycott that really hurts you by exposing you to prosecution and also doesn’t actually accomplish your political goals.
Lol I’m not reading all that.
Proton’s CEO is a fan of the MAGA hate cult, so they can fuck off. I’ll use another VPN and not lose sleep over it.
Air has worked really well for me. It’s not as straightforward to set up as some others, but it’s had better uptime than my server.
PIA also has port forwarding. I have been using it with great success for several years. Don’t know anything about their politics.
They’re the best hands down.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the warning!
I’m not trying to convince you either way, but can you point to the ‘political BS’ Proton guy said that made you flip? I use Proton and also veer hard left wherever politics are concerned, and I personally think the whole thing is way overblown. I may have missed something though, happy to hear otherwise, because in my understanding all he did was soft-endorse someone who identifies as republican at the moment
Here’s the exact post that got the Proton CEO in trouble:
Maybe Gail Slater really is a great pick for Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Frankly, I have no idea. But I won’t do business with any company that carries any water whatsoever for Trump.
He also went on Reddit and defended his statements by saying he wasn’t familiar with American politics and he’s sorry if he triggered people. So he’s claiming to be unaware of thing because he doesn’t engage in American politics, and at the exact same time, he’s using right-wing talking points like misusing the term “triggered” to mean “upset left-leaning people”. Something he could only have picked up if he’s lurking in right-wing spaces.
He called republicans “Republicans” and the Democrats “dems” in the comment.
he’s using right-wing talking points like misusing the term “triggered” to mean “upset left-leaning people”.
At this point you can pretty much pick up that term from anywhere. We might think it’s dumb, we might use it sarcastically, but it’s entered our lexicon.
While that’s true, “I’m sorry that you got upset at what I did” is in no way actually an apology or an admission that they might have been wrong, so…
My comment is in no way related to the CEO dude
Everyone bases their opinion off that one out-of-context tweet, but if you actually take the time to evaluate the context you’ll find it’s extremely unlikely that Andy Yen (Proton CEO) is a “Trump supporter”. At worst, he is a rationalist who wants to continue Proton’s work with the US administration regardless of who is president, rather than having a tantrum and trying to virtue signal boycott and achieve nothing for 4+ years. Unfortunately a lot of people on the left would rather circlejerk in their online cope chambers like Lemmy and Bluesky rather than actually engage with reality.
I was one of the people who based my opinion of Proton on that tweet and swore off them until someone else shared that link with me. It’s excellent, thorough, and makes a convincing case that Yang is actually left-leaning. I can only assume that you’re getting downvotes from people who haven’t read it.
I’ve seen that Medium article shared here before and find it very unconvincing. While I agree that framing the Proton CEO as an evil Nazi lapdog is a bit much, here’s a comment I saw on Lemmy another time this was discussed that explains why the article is flawed better than I could.
The downvotes are for the unnecessary holier-than-thou rant at the end attacking everyone using this very site.
I have scores disabled so I wasn’t aware that I was being mass downvoted, but I think it only further validates my point that Lemmy is full of left-wingers who have fled here so they can have an echo chamber safe space where their opinions and behaviours are never questioned. It’s quite sad how easily triggered people are, they have a complete existential crisis if you even try to point them in the direction of reality.
One thing to consider is that your interpretations of the polemics around “echo chamber” and “safe space” are rather provincial.
This sort of phrasing can in good faith be dismissed as politically defined regional demagoguery.
Yeah I’m with you. I’m more pissed with Proton for disengaging via Mastodon than at the stupid CEO - but none if it is a good reason enough to opt for lesser services. Proton’s doing good stuff.
The strong other half of my reasoning was port forwarding being locked to GUI. I use a lot of scripts to keep my server restart process simple.
Wait, port forwarding on Proton is locked behind a GUI? That doesn’t seem right - I use proton with port forwarding for my torrent setup on my NAS and it connects to VPN just using environment variables from a docker compose file. No Proton software installed at all.
Also fully possible I’ve misread something; apologies if so.
I don’t know about ‘locked’ so much as ‘hard to get running with headless linux’. I looked into it two or three times and was stymied by the various ways it went wrong.
In comparison, windscribe had me choose a port on their website, and then I used that in my docker run command and it just worked.
That’s understandable. I do recall when setting up my stuff that Proton’s documentation left a lot to be desired. Thankfully I found the Dr Frankenstein guides that walked me through it. I don’t do much script writing of my own though, so that may not be helpful for everyone.
A search of the comments didn’t turn up any mention of seedboxes. So I’ll throw that hat in the ring as an option.
Seems like something that could fit here
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.
