Even if you have encrypted your traffic with a VPN, advanced traffic analysis is a growing threat against your privacy. Therefore, we have developed DAITA – a feature available in our VPN app. Through constant packet sizes, random background traffic and data pattern distortion, we are taking the battle against AI-guided traffic analysis.

From Mullvad

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      1 day ago

      Hey they did support it until they were getting difficult legal contacts because some users were abusing it, and getting turned away by different hosting providers.

      They shut it down to protect the rest of us who use it without abusing it.

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

      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.

      I know the port forwarding thing can be a deal-breaker for some people, but it’s not Mullvad’s fault that they needed to remove this to be able to continue providing quality services for the rest of their customer base.

      This is sadly one of those “this is why we can’t have nice things” type deals because when enough people abuse it, it becomes a problem. I have no ill will towards Mullvad for taking it away when it became financially and legally foolish to continue doing so.

      • apex32@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        1 day ago

        How are other VPN services able to do port forwarding without having this problem?

          • lapping6596@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            1 day ago

            Given how often I see articles where a pedo was caught because they were sending photos over telegram unencrypted or similar. I do think many are that stupid.

            • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              20 hours ago

              Much like other criminals, only the stupid ones get caught. Look at how many of those articles say that they’d been doing it for decades. Many more of them are out there right now.

            • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
              0·
              1 day ago

              I think that’s another reputable VPN?

              Then my theory might be debunked or they will get forced to cut off port forwarding too

              • boonhet@lemm.eeEnglish
                0·
                14 hours ago

                I’m not sure. Some people say that because they’re in Italy which is part of the N eyes, they’re not trustworthy.

                Then there’s the fact that they haven’t been audited independently. The admin says it’s because audits are security theater not real proof of privacy, so he’d rather not give some 3rd party root access to the servers.

        • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          1 day ago

          When you torrent you can only connect to peers that have open ports, if your ports are closed. Which means it makes it a lot harder to upload if you rely on private trackers and maintaining a good ratio. One can still download and upload, but for especially older torrents it has a good chance to affect your speeds and ability to download.

          • Jack Sparrow@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            1 day ago

            This is accurate when using the BT protocol. However if you have uTP (Micro Transport Protocol) enabled, it has “support for NAT traversal using UDP hole punching between two port-restricted peers where a third unrestricted peer acts as a STUN server.”