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.

  • @sus@programming.devEnglish
    2•14 hours ago

    Sure you can look at it as just a bit of politicking (if a poorly thought out one), but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Proton hasn’t done anything that clearly crosses an unacceptable line, but they’ve made a lot of other highly questionable decisions in a relatively short timespan

    oh, actually now that I looked it up closer, starting about 9 months ago they did a foot in the door manuever (a survey with leading questions followed up by misrepresenting the results) and then aggressively pushed an AI service that, you guessed it, tries to read all the emails you write and receive, totally undermining the end-to-end encryption. (the claim is it works locally, but most users have their data processed on the proton servers unencrypted)
    And the way they did it is straight out of the enshittification playbook where they first promise that it’s “business only” and then later try to push it to all users, and claiming it’s off by default while it’s actually on by default

    https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/07/18/proton-mail-goes-ai-security-focused-userbase-goes-what-on-earth/

    (this article only covers the early portion of the debacle)

    this isn’t even all the problems with proton either, though all the other things are pretty minor by comparison (eg. quitting mastodon “because it’s too expensive to maintain” (?))

    • AlaknárEnglish
      1•14 hours ago

      aggressively pushed an AI service that, you guessed it, tries to read all the emails you write (…) (this article only covers the early portion of the debacle)

      Did you actually read it, though?

      1. They claim to respect privacy and - to date - have done nothing to suggest that they don’t.

      2. It’s running on European-run Mistral.ai, which is subject to all the standard GDPR rules.

      3. IT’S OPTIONAL (there goes the “aggressive push” bit)

      4. NOTHING EXCEPT FOR THE PROMPT IS SENT TO MISTRAL (there goes the “reads all emails” bit)

      I get it. People see “AI” and immediately panic. But it doesn’t seem like the panic HERE makes any sense at all.

      quitting mastodon “because it’s too expensive to maintain”

      I’d say having to either pay a guy to maintain the account or pay for software that allows cross-posting to both Twitter and Mastodon (with both having different limitations) gets expensive if you realise that they were getting minuscule engagement on Mastodon. It’s a shit move, but I get where they’re coming from. Same reason why Garuda Linux has a subreddit, but not a Lemmy Community.

      but they’ve made a lot of other highly questionable decisions in a relatively short timespan

      Nothing you’ve shown me so far is anywhere near the point where I’d be suspicious of them.

      Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying they’re the end-all-be-all of privacy oriented services. There’s a bunch of stuff they do wrong (especially with how they farm engagement on their TT account), but as far as privacy and security themselves? I’ve yet to see an issue.

      • @sus@programming.devEnglish
        1•13 hours ago
        1. They claim to respect privacy and - to date - have done nothing to suggest that they don’t.

        If you ignore all the fast and loose they play with privacy, sure, there is “nothing to suggest” they don’t respect it.

        IT’S OPTIONAL (there goes the “aggressive push” bit)

        It’s not an aggressive push if you ignore the part where they repeatedly use the foot in the door technique where they first promise they won’t do something, and then later do it anyways.

        They claim it is optional but they just shove a pop-up in your face about AI, while misleading you about how it works. This is about 1 step away from how most companies “allow” you to “preserve your privacy” by carefully clicking “no” to a long list of popups suggesting you give them cookies and share your emails etc.

        This may be easy to dismiss as “problem between keyboard and chair” but when it predictably leads to many users thinking it’s off but being surprised when they find it turned on without them realizing it it’s not much consolation

        NOTHING EXCEPT FOR THE PROMPT IS SENT TO MISTRAL (there goes the “reads all emails” bit)

        How do you figure that works? The server somehow corrects your spelling mistakes without reading the email containing the spelling mistake? Again, End-to-end encryption is a core advertised feature of protonmail, and this completely sidesteps it while actively misleading users into thinking it doesn’t

        • AlaknárEnglish
          2•13 hours ago

          If you ignore all the fast and loose they play with privacy, sure

          I’m not ignoring it, I just never heard about it. Got some articles/examples?

          It’s not an aggressive push if you ignore the part where they repeatedly use the foot in the door technique where they first promise they won’t do something, and then later do it anyways.

          Can’t comment because I haven’t seen the original announcement. Are you sure it wasn’t to the tune of “it will be available for Business” and then people extrapolated that to mean “it will never, ever, ever-ever even remotely touch the ‘civilian’ accounts”?

          They claim it is optional but they just shove a pop-up in your face about AI

          Ah, yes, recommending new features, the Hitler of XXI c’s IT.

          Come on now…

          while misleading you about how it works

          Please elaborate.

          it predictably leads to many users thinking it’s off but being surprised when they find it turned on without them realizing it it’s not much consolation

          I mean… Yeah, they added the button instead of having the user toggle a switch for the button to appear. But, as I’m reading it, it’s not the feature that is “on” or “off” in the sense that you seem to see it. It’s not “‘on’, therefore it’s doing something behind the scenes”. It’s “on” as in: “the button is visible, and if you click it, you can start interacting with it, but it does nothing unless you tell it to do something”. I may be wrong, of course, but I wouldn’t discount the entire company on the basis of a Reddit comment.

          How do you figure that works? The server somehow corrects your spelling mistakes without reading the email containing the spelling mistake?

          If you ask Scribe to correct spelling mistakes, then the prompt contains the email you asked it to correct, that seems fairly obvious. It doesn’t, however, “read your mailbox”, because it can’t.