Mullvad's ads are good

Jokes on you, I already pay for Mullvad. AD fucking failure

Mullvad disabled port forwarding. Bad for torrents. That was when everyone I know stopped using it.

Yep. This here
They pussied out
Not being able to host my web apps made it a no for me
- Hosting a website over a VPN is not a great idea anyways. You should use something like Cloudflares proxied domains or tunnels. Your users will get far better performance and you'll see significantly less load on your network.
What VPN is left that I can use to host my website with open ports 80 and 443 ?
- For other ports, you can use AirVPN. For 80 and 443, rent a cheap vps and use it as a reverse proxy, then point it to your actually open ports. Or just host on the cheap vps.
- I moved to AriVpn As Mullvad stopped supporting port forwarding. I can recommend Air.
- Proton i believe has a selection of locations that support port forwarding.
- None I assume. No sane VPN provider will let their users do that.
Still a good VPN for other stuff

Mullvad is great, only VPN i'll ever use. I'm just a random number to them. no emails, no names, nothing. Hell I can even just pay them in cash if I wanted. Their service has improved too. on some wifi networks it would take me a couple minutes to connect but now it's instant. Soon as I boot into my WM just "mullvad connect" in the terminal and I'm good to go.

I pay for mine with vouchers, just as convenient as a credit card as long as you renew ahead of time, and just as anonymous as cash.
Wish I could buy them somewhere other than amazon though.
Honestly that sounds great. I'm kind of annoyed how often NordVPN keeps emailing me and trying to upsell me on the daily.
The service is fine overall. But the nonstop promotion, along with it being a US company that can easily just give all their info to the US government, makes me wanting to switch pronto.
- I don't think NordVPN is American. They just market heavily via American YouTubers. It has Lithuanian roots and is incorporated in The Netherlands according to Wikipedia.
They should hire you!

Mullvad is one of those services that just works and I never worry about whether my server's connection has fallen over. It's fairly priced, transparent, and doesn't abuse my privacy or trust. They never try to lure me into buying more/bigger/better like pretty much every company does now. Much like my water supply, I literally forget that the underlying solution exists because it so reliably does it's job.

Feeling the same about Tailscale recently, but this comment is bait to find out if I'm wrong! Not paying yet but considering it.

Tailscale is a VPN in the classic sense, I e. to build a secure network over an insecure one. Mullvad is a service to hide your public IP address and switch from having to trust your ISP to having to trust Mullvad.
I too have a subscription to one of the latter services, but I always find them sketchy
- Yes I know, that's why I use both for different purposes
  I mean whether TailScale is more similar to Mullvad in business model and customer centrism, or whether the early signs of enshittification are already there (I haven't seen any red flags to date)
They never try to lure me into buying more/bigger/better like pretty much every company does now.
Windscribe enters the chat.
Biggest mistake I ever made was signing up for them. just the constant daily emails trying to be "funny" to get me to return.

Mod here . I found this amusing, and op is good sport, so fuck y'all I'm leaving it up. 😁

11/10 mod behavior
Appreciate this.
That's how classic Reddit was for me.
Mods who are extremely rigid to the rules had to exist when the spammers went crazy. But with smaller communities, modding should be based on vibes. You get better conversations that way.

All I have to say to these commenters suggesting OP is a shill:

Chill out and drink a nice, refreshing Dr. Pepper to calm your nerves.

^{this message brought to you by Carl's Jr. and the Ad Council}

Carl's Jr. - Fuck you! Im eating.
Deep, have a fresca.
This also made me chuckle. 10/10 comment.
Speaking of Dr. Pepper, try the Strawberries & Cream Zero Sugar flavor, it's bomb

Lol, people have post-reddit PTSD if they think you're a shill. Maybe if/when Lemmy hits the mainstream but man, we're so off the radar most marketers have no idea this place exists.

It's a waste of money unless you're advertising something for Linux and/or communism... which would be a bit of a paradox, lol

linux/communism is mostly a package deal these days
- i'd just like to interject for a moment, what you're calling linux/communism is actually gnu/linux/communism. or something. idk, i really don't want to see walls of text by richard stallman here.
If I ever start selling any software I'll gladly market it on Lemmy, but only because it would be a privacy preserving alternative to some enshittified existing service.

I’m happy with proton

This is the type of ad I absolutely don't mind because they aren't for absolutely soulless companies that will fuck your grandma and then sue you for emotional damages afterwards.

love mullvad wish they where clearer explaing how vpns work and the downsides but still love mullvad

i knew mullvad was an absolute banger when i made an account. biggest green flag ever, radioactive green.

I love Mullvad. ❤️

I'm going back to Europe for a few months for a visit. I was looking at other VPNs and they were offering me cheap discounts but I'd have to sign up for 2 years or some shit. Mullvad was very straightforward in their pricing and I was able to generate the VPN config and I have it installed on my travel router really easily.

We've been getting ads from them in Seattle too

It's reached a point where the government is pushing for websites to card you before you can enter.
Women apps were giving data so the government can arrest women for abortion-like behavior.
We're already at the point where privacy/anonymity is the only way to visit the internet.
They were on Boston's T stations as well a couple months ago. Maybe they target cities specifically, I haven't seen any outside tech industry centers.
- Saw some in London last month.
I was surprised to see Mullvad ads on the Link. Pleasantly surprised, at that!

Over a hundred people up voting... an ad.

Here's the thing. The reason ads are bad is because almost every single one is for a product that will exploit the user. Mullvad is a product that does the opposite. They ask for money, but don't force it. They intend to give power of the user's life back to the user. Thus, some ads are actually okay. Ads about VPNs, self hosted systems, anti-corporate anticapitalist services, software that is for you to use and only ever takes telemetry for software improvement, and then only if you consent first.
Hell, before this garbage, on TV the only ads were products and charities, and everybody grew really sick of the African child ads because its sole purpose was to exploit the viewer's empathy and get their money. Same with now, except if it's not money they want it's data, and data is money to them.
- Nah, the reason ads are bad is because they poison your mind down to the unconscious parts. It doesn't matter if the company behind it is moral or not, it's still memetic pollution.
  Edit: For the record I don't have a huge issue with this post being here, but I wanted to chip in with my opinion that ads are bad even if you separate them from the product they're advertising.
- Related note
  I’m a Ublock Origin kinda guy, but not a SponsorBlock one
  Because gestures at capitalism is the thing for now:
  Sponsorships, when transparent and well-chosen and clearly labeled and clever, are less grating and don’t use anti-privacy targeting methods. That’s a path forward I’m pretty much OK with (remember capitalism is the thing, you & I have to eat like the YouTubers?).
  My expectation is not “everyone should do everything for free” or “you’re only allowed to sell merch, without ever mentioning it” or “uploaders must have live shows and sell tickets if they ever want a dollar”. It’s “ewww, ads” and the malware that we’re exposed to alongside them.
  Meant to make a post about this but your comment triggered it early :)
I've never had a problem with ads made in this way. My only complaint would be it looks like an actual post. Even though OP is just sharing it, a filterable tag, like we have for nsfw, would be nice.
This form of "passive marketing" (I'm making up terms), I.e a random picture in the feed that you can easily scroll past is fine (assuming its marked appropriately and there are not too many). If the post catches attention enough that people start sharing it because they liked it, the marketer has done a good job. I also consider banner ads "passive". If they actually filter out the scams and malware, and if someone wants to sponsor Rod's Radical Recipes with a banner ad, who cares.
I do take issue with I'll call active marketing. This is an ad you're forced to engage with, like an unmutable gas pumps that's playing audio, a commercial break or a pre-roll add. If I'm getting something for free, then sure an add or two seems reasonable (well, 15 years ago it did), but I'm already paying for the gas, shut the fuck up and let me enjoy my 3 minutes of stress watching the numbers go up without some guy screaming about beef jerky.
Edit: reworded the second paragraph, definitely didn't look at the background too quick and think it was a real poster somewhere and talk about random posters on a wall...nope defiantly not.

Mullard VPN marketing dept has a Lemmy account?

Or just a San Francisco resident --- these ads are everywhere on BART (+Muni I guess) right now. (As far as ads go, they're pretty good I guess --- and no, I don't even use them, much less work for them.)