Mullvad Removing the support for forwarded ports

[NaDre 157]

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
 

[benfitita 39]

That's a sad day. I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent search warrant. Or was that only for a show and behind the scenes they got an offer they can't refuse?

[revsplus 8]

Allow me a brief, maybe emotional rant now, as a disappointed Mullvad customer and happy AirVPN customer. What Mullvad just did asserts a dangerous principle: if an online service or a technology can be abused by some people, then suspend that service for everyone. How long before this principle is extended to Tor hidden services, end to end encryption, p2p protocols, or VPN services themselves, by leveraging precisely the wretched behavior of the same actors (Mullvad today, others in the past) offering the same service itself?

[ss11 15]

Indeed, it most certainly has something to do with the search warrant, search that was actually more like a simple visit for a cup of tea, based on what I read in your link nothing was seized, nobody was indicted, etc.

It's a shame after years of running they cancel a crucial service (port forwarding) at the fist knock in the door... but it was expected based on how they choose their hosting partners (see differences between AirVPN countries and their countries.) at first, for a beginner, it might look better but in fact it's not as the fact proves us.

I am confident AirVPN will be rock solid and of course this is discrimination terminating a feature because *some* use it for unlawful purposes. It's like saying I'm not selling cars any more because some people use cars to rob banks.
So many services are useless without port forwarding.

[rohko 17]

Just renewed my AirVPN subscription. Hopefully, AirVPN will not be applying the same policy. However, on some day the ports will run out and AirVPN might need to start offering port forwardings city-wise.

[Staff 9972]

3 hours ago, rohko said:

However, on some day the ports will run out and AirVPN might need to start offering port forwardings city-wise.

That's correct and we will start an evaluation of possible solutions in the next days. It's not a trivial problem at all and it will require a lot of care, but at the moment the day you mention seems still very far away. Of course port usage could increase anytime, we're aware of that.

Thank you and kind regards!
 

[drum 5]

11 hours ago, Staff said:

That's correct and we will start an evaluation of possible solutions in the next days.

I've been having random thoughts about this port shortage, what came to mind was to separate users into x groups, for example group "a" and group "b". the system would use the same entry ip but 2 exit ips, one for each group.
So when a user of group "b" connects to a server it may use the same entry ip as group "a", but the server software detects the user-group and uses the corresponding exit ip.
That would also require a re-work on some other parts like Client Area to be aware of different groups and such.
I'm no tech guy so probably a likeable approach is not feasible at all.

[GaryUnwin 7]

On 5/30/2023 at 2:15 PM, ss11 said:

It's a shame after years of running they cancel a crucial service (port forwarding) at the fist knock in the door... but it was expected based on how they choose their hosting partners (see differences between AirVPN countries and their countries.)

Hosting partners, and countries? I haven't paid attention to the choice of hosting providers and countries. For hosting partners and VPNs to keep resisting law enforcement, people need to support ideas of freedom, inalienable rights, and decentralization.
If more people support freedom and rights, then it becomes far easier for everyone to keep resisting law enforcement.
Thus, to tackle the issue, we need to educate what freedom actually is to people. Most people think they are free, but they are not.

If people support governments more strongly, then we get gestapo instead of VPNs. Law enforcement wants to be gestapo if they can be.

If VPN providers actually cared about continuting their business, then they should donate to content creators who educate people on freedom. Otherwise, governments may destroy VPN providers in the future.

Anyway, I will try AirVPN soon because I want at least several ports. Edited ... by GaryUnwin

[Staff 9972]

@GaryUnwin
 

Quote

If VPN providers actually cared about continuting their business, then they should donate to content creators who educate people on freedom.

Hello!

Please check https://airvpn.org/mission

The following forum is dedicated to community driven suggestions to donations:
https://airvpn.org/forums/forum/32-nonprofit/

Kind regards
 

[GaryUnwin 7]

7 hours ago, Staff said:

The following forum is dedicated to community driven suggestions to donations:
https://airvpn.org/forums/forum/32-nonprofit/

Be careful with NGOs. Many of them are funded by governments for governments to decrease freedom.
https://www.corbettreport.com/flashback-ngos-are-the-deep-states-trojan-horses-2018/ for details.
Rockefeller feigned good-will through fake philanthropy. People fell for it. Bill Gates, too.

Some NGOs can be good. But, I prefer independent individuals or groups that have no monetary relationship with governments or evil corporations.

James Corbett provides good research references.

I may suggest a few people on nonprofit section later. For now, I would say that most donation suggestions don't address the root cause of tyranny. Human mind is the source of everything including tyranny. Content creators address what goes into human mind. In particular, people should specifically learn freedom.

If you donate to technologies, then it should be technologies that help content creators evade censorship and produce contents. Things like good open-source video editors used by independent content creators and content platforms like odysee.com that help content creators evade censorship. Technologies help to the degree that they help freedom-loving content creators influence other people. Edited ... by GaryUnwin

[Snowsuit8087 4]

The following comments from Fredrik Stromberg, cofounder of Mullvad, seem to indicate that the removal of port forwarding was unrelated to the issues discussed earlier:

Quote

I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience we have caused you.

Announcing the removal of a feature such as this a mere 30 days ahead is not how we like to conduct our business in the general case. I expect those of our customers who relied on this feature to be disappointed by its removal as well as the manner in which it was done.

Nevertheless it was the right thing to do. The manner and extent in which it came to be abused in recent months made it unacceptable for us to continue providing it. This feature should have been removed a long time ago, with a longer grace period. It wasn't - a mistake on our part - and some of our users suffered for it, including you. For this I am sorry.

Affected customers can get their money back for any prepaid service they can not use, of course.

If you used port forwarding to (I) make a service reachable (II) from the open Internet there are plenty of good hosting providers which will happily take your business.

If you used port forwarding to (III) stay anonymous while (I) making a service reachable we can highly recommend Tor's "onion service" feature. It was built with that use case in mind.

If you used port forwarding to (III) stay anonymous while (I) making a service reachable (II) from the open Internet, there are no good options that we can recommend.

Port forwarding needed to be removed on moral grounds. It needed to be removed because it was causing too much of a disturbance to our core mission of making mass surveillance and censorship ineffective.

I hope my explanation has - if not allayed your disappointment - at least provided some clarity.

Best regards, Fredrik Stromberg (cofounder of Mullvad VPN)

Quote

FYI: Our decision to remove port forwarding was not a reaction to the surprise visit by Swedish police. I wish we had been more clear about this in our blog post.

Full thread: HN