The inner circle so to speak
The thing is, ownership of any of these can change at any time. Bitwarden, Mullvad, and Tutanota could be sold to very different owners.
That is up to and including something like uBlock Origin, which only has one developer, and would suddenly be very different if that developer died and the project had to be forked.
You can never trust that the person who takes on the reigns has the same ideals as the people running them now.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access. That’s not Mullvad’s fault, but it is an example of them having to change their philosophy and what they offer because of abuse.
Trust should only go so far, and loss of trust should be very easy. There’s not a good reason to keep “trusting” something when it has fundamentally changed from its initial ideals.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access. That’s not Mullvad’s fault, but it is an example of them having to change their philosophy and what they offer because of abuse.
It’s a real shame too. It was a nice feature.
Hell, Mullvad was abused to the point they removed access to Port Forwarding on their VPN service, which has led to many people needing to switch to crummier, shadier VPNs that still offer port forwarding access.
Could you explain what happened?
As clear as I can make it out, it seems like it was related to a search warrant that was executed on Mullvad.
Because just a little over a month after the news of the failed raid, there was news of them removing port forwarding.
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
Emphasis mine.
Unfortunately port forwarding also allows avenues for abuse, which in some cases can result in a far worse experience for the majority of our users. Regrettably individuals have frequently used this feature to host undesirable content and malicious services from ports that are forwarded from our VPN servers. This has led to law enforcement contacting us, our IPs getting blacklisted, and hosting providers cancelling us.
The result is that it affects the majority of our users negatively, because they cannot use our service without having services being blocked.
The abuse vector of port forwarding has caught up with us, and today we announce the discontinuation of support for port forwarding. This means that if you are a user of forwarded ports, you will not be able to add or modify the ports you have in use.
They made a smart call that has probably increased the long term privacy of their users.
People were using port forwarding to host illegal shit, and governments were getting pissed off about it. Mullvad has been able to prove in court that they don’t keep logs, but that’s not a perfect deterrent; a properly motivated government, perhaps if somebody is using Mullvad to host CSAM, might attempt to legally force Mullvad to put logging in and add anti-canary clauses.
Preventing port forwarding keeps customers as consumers rather than hosters, and avoids this issue.
This is true and people should always be mindful of this. Additionally you should consider not just the ownership of the companies but also the infrastructure they rely on such as their rented servers, payment processors, on-site staff etc. However commercial VPNs remain a convenient compromise for many use cases. These services are probably fine for your shitposing needs but should not be relied upon for activism for instance.
bruh, i can’t be the only one confused why state farm’s drive safe app was being touted…
I love Mole, Shield and Road
Why do you trust a Germany based secure email over something like Proton? At least Mullvad is Sweden based.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c
https://piped.video/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Not more than the Swiss. Germany is part of the spy dragnet. It does not offer the same level of privacy protection.
Five and eleven eyes doesn’t matter if the service is encrypted and open sourced. Also, did you know that Switzerland has no superior privacy laws comparing to Germany? It’s all marketing bluff.
So why are my German relatives super-scared of pirating because of the government finding out, and get me to torrent all their shit for them and mail it to them on cheap hardrives?
https://www.engadget.com/protonmail-climate-activist-ip-swiss-french-authorities-233004304.html
Europol requested it. Even though you think your service is not under 14 eyes there still is gonna be many other problems.
You can always find problems with the service itself.
And that proves what exactly? Swiss law required them to hand over an IP address. Swiss ptivacy is not absolute. They have laws. An IP address didn’t grant them access to the encrypted emails. Proton openly admits they had no idea who the user was. The activist should have used a VPN, which Proton also offers as a service, and then whatever activity trail they linked to the IP would have died at Proton’s VPN network.
Protonmail then went to court, and got the law changed so it doesn’t happen again https://www.reuters.com/technology/proton-wins-swiss-court-appeal-over-surveillance-rules-2021-10-22/
Selfhosting an email is very hard but I think that at the end it’s worth it
Until Gmail/Hotmail decides your IP is a spammer and forever you have deliverability issues from then on
Interesting, is this a wild spread problem? I have heard of people that host email services for years and have no problems.
I read some horror stories about folks who self-hosted for years and how they eventually quit and moved to an established email provider. It didn’t seem like something I wanted to deal with.
Do you think using one of those federated email networks where it’s invite only and between people you know would have any appreciable use cases in conjunction with an established provider? I can think of having a small org use it maybe but not between friends or family.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=IeXaYR4ed9c
https://piped.video/watch?v=QCx_G_R0UmQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
