Mullvad removing port forwarding effective 2023-07-01

r4h156

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

Mullvad was my go-to VPN for port forwarding multiple torrent clients. Looks like I need a new VPN now.

So far it's looking like the best replacements that support multiple forwarded ports are AirVPN and IVPN, but I would appreciate other recommendations if anyone knows of any.

bruh21

been using the ivacy $18 lifetime that @Ympker posted about. they resell purevpn so you can use their servers for port forwarding once you enable it in the ivacy client area. the nice part about it is you can forward every single port on the IP (you pretty much get the IP dedicated until you disconnect). i’ve been using the purevpn ikev2 port forwarding config with qbittorrent on a VPS and i’ve had no issues on the Sweden server. the Germany server and Belgium server had some issues though.

not sure if the lifetime deal is still available though, and keep in mind it’s not officially supposed to include the port forwarding feature by default as it’s a paid addon.
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

oh, and keep in mind i’m pretty sure they block torrents in the US. you’re pretty much limited to European/middle eastern locations for those that support port forwarding and bittorrent.

Hotmarer

@bruh21 said:
been using the ivacy $18 lifetime that @Ympker posted about. they resell purevpn so you can use their servers for port forwarding once you enable it in the ivacy client area. the nice part about it is you can forward every single port on the IP (you pretty much get the IP dedicated until you disconnect). i’ve been using the purevpn ikev2 port forwarding config with qbittorrent on a VPS and i’ve had no issues on the Sweden server. the Germany server and Belgium server had some issues though.

not sure if the lifetime deal is still available though, and keep in mind it’s not officially supposed to include the port forwarding feature by default as it’s a paid addon.
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

oh, and keep in mind i’m pretty sure they block torrents in the US. you’re pretty much limited to European/middle eastern locations for those that support port forwarding and bittorrent.

They only allow torrenting on Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden or Turkey servers.

TimRoo

@bruh21 said:
been using the ivacy $18 lifetime that @Ympker posted about.

not sure if the lifetime deal is still available though

Just checked StackSocial, and it looks to be gone

bruh21

@Hotmarer said:

@bruh21 said:
been using the ivacy $18 lifetime that @Ympker posted about. they resell purevpn so you can use their servers for port forwarding once you enable it in the ivacy client area. the nice part about it is you can forward every single port on the IP (you pretty much get the IP dedicated until you disconnect). i’ve been using the purevpn ikev2 port forwarding config with qbittorrent on a VPS and i’ve had no issues on the Sweden server. the Germany server and Belgium server had some issues though.

not sure if the lifetime deal is still available though, and keep in mind it’s not officially supposed to include the port forwarding feature by default as it’s a paid addon.
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

oh, and keep in mind i’m pretty sure they block torrents in the US. you’re pretty much limited to European/middle eastern locations for those that support port forwarding and bittorrent.

They only allow torrenting on Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden or Turkey servers.

you can also use purevpn servers. the following are allowed: https://support.purevpn.com/p2p-file-sharing

Hotmarer

@bruh21 said:

@Hotmarer said:

@bruh21 said:
been using the ivacy $18 lifetime that @Ympker posted about. they resell purevpn so you can use their servers for port forwarding once you enable it in the ivacy client area. the nice part about it is you can forward every single port on the IP (you pretty much get the IP dedicated until you disconnect). i’ve been using the purevpn ikev2 port forwarding config with qbittorrent on a VPS and i’ve had no issues on the Sweden server. the Germany server and Belgium server had some issues though.

not sure if the lifetime deal is still available though, and keep in mind it’s not officially supposed to include the port forwarding feature by default as it’s a paid addon.
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

oh, and keep in mind i’m pretty sure they block torrents in the US. you’re pretty much limited to European/middle eastern locations for those that support port forwarding and bittorrent.

They only allow torrenting on Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Russia, Sweden or Turkey servers.

you can also use purevpn servers. the following are allowed: https://support.purevpn.com/p2p-file-sharing

Thanks. I didn't know that purevpn has more servers where you can torrent.

Ympker

Ivacy Lifetime is no longer on Stacksocial.

farsighter

@bruh21 said:
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

So that will be $3 for 5 years of service without port forwarding (and $6 with port forwarding). Am I right?

Not too bad if so

bruh21

@farsighter said:

@bruh21 said:
it appears you can order using topcashback and get 95% cash back, if you want to order through them.

So that will be $3 for 5 years of service without port forwarding (and $6 with port forwarding). Am I right?

Not too bad if so

that sounds about right. sometimes topcashback will also have 100% cash back on some VPNs. I got Private Internet Access for free a while ago with that. It appears PureVPN is doing one of those sales, but it's not entirely clear whether you'll earn anything if you add the port forwarding addon. https://www.topcashback.com/purevpn/

treesmokah

it sadly had to happen, sooner or later.
still glad they provided it for so long.

as an alternative i can recommend IVPN, they got port forwarding as well.

r4h156

@treesmokah said: as an alternative i can recommend IVPN, they got port forwarding as well.

They only offer 1 forwarded port, don't allow port forwarding on US servers, and are more expensive.

treesmokah

@r4h156 said:

@treesmokah said: as an alternative i can recommend IVPN, they got port forwarding as well.

They only offer 1 forwarded port, don't allow port forwarding on US servers, and are more expensive.

anyone who offers it is essentially asking for problems, so i would take whatever they give me.
offering something like that is extremely risky, nobody will negotiate with a vpn provider when someone hosts some big c2c using its port forward.

all the vpn's that got closed by feds and were in the news, basically were for that. port forwarding rat's and other shit(of course their tos stated its prohibited, but who cares).

there used to be ra4w vpn which was popular for "port forwarding" use, was cheap and shit. but they are gone, i know they now operate under a different name but i dont remember what was it.

maverick

@treesmokah said:
it sadly had to happen, sooner or later.
still glad they provided it for so long.

as an alternative i can recommend IVPN, they got port forwarding as well.

First of all, welcome back @treesmokah, I missed your posts!

I think you were recommending IVPN before (possibly over Mullvad?), but I'm really interested in some details what specifically you like about them? Apologies if you have answered that already, I might have missed it.

Must admit, Mullvad surprised me with this decision, I have a feeling that they will lose lots of customers over this. Then again, if all those (bad actors?) move to IVPN, how long can we expect IVPN to provide port forwarding?

Francisco

There’s multiple vpn providers that are “spamhaus list on sight” because they are heavy on port forwarding and keep hosting tons of botnets. This was their main market basically.

Spamhaus goes as far as to start blacklisting upstream IPs to get them pulled.

Francisco

treesmokah

@maverick said: First of all, welcome back @treesmokah, I missed your posts!

Thanks

@maverick said: I think you were recommending IVPN before (possibly over Mullvad?), but I'm really interested in some details what specifically you like about them? Apologies if you have answered that already, I might have missed it.

Both are extremely good, however IVPN has in my opinion more stable servers, better support(for those who need it), vastly superior clients to Mullvad(especially on mobile) and now port forwarding.
I also very appreciate their "marketing", its a complete opposite of what mainstream vpn's tell(lie) normies. https://www.doineedavpn.com/ as well as their frontpage.
They also maintain a very useful dns leak test tool - https://dnsleaktest.com/

@maverick said: Must admit, Mullvad surprised me with this decision, I have a feeling that they will lose lots of customers over this. Then again, if all those (bad actors?) move to IVPN, how long can we expect IVPN to provide port forwarding?

IVPN is generally less known than Mullvad, and way way smaller.
It is also more expensive. But yeah, there is no guarantee they will remove port forwarding the future if bad actors move there.
There is no way to make port forwarding good, from anonymity and security standpoint. Prepare that every provider will remove it at some point.

maverick

@treesmokah said: IVPN is generally less known than Mullvad, and way way smaller.
It is also more expensive. But yeah, there is no guarantee they will remove port forwarding the future if bad actors move there.

Thanks for all info. This is exactly how I see it, smaller, yet more expensive. I guess I'll have to test myself to see the difference.

@Francisco said: There’s multiple vpn providers that are “spamhaus list on sight” because they are heavy on port forwarding and keep hosting tons of botnets. This was their main market basically.

Spamhaus is basically anti spam company, right? At least that is what I use them for (their RBL), and must admit they're pretty good at that (don't remember a single false positive coming from their RBL, yet they help reject tons of spam very effectively). So, personally I only see benefits from them listing VPN IP's as possible spam sources. Especially if those VPN nodes were actually used to send spam. At least, that is my opinion.

If anybody needs to send email anonymously, I feel there are better services, or better ways to use VPN to do that, instead of just injecting those emails via SMTP just like spammers do?

treesmokah

@maverick said: Thanks for all info. This is exactly how I see it, smaller, yet more expensive. I guess I'll have to test myself to see the difference.

Quality is better than Mullvad imo, clients, servers, support etc
Its worth additional few bucks per month, and if you do not need multihop and port forward, its on pair with Mullvad in terms of pricing(and cheaper if you pay yearly).

Hit them up on Twitter/Mastodon/Reddit, they will give you a free giftcard to check out their services.
They have gave me cards for a good few months because I was active in their "community", very nice guys.

Francisco

@maverick said: So, personally I only see benefits from them listing VPN IP's as possible spam sources. Especially if those VPN nodes were actually used to send spam. At least, that is my opinion.

Spamhaus got into the 'fighting malware' business quite some years ago, so targetting botnets/malware was why they were hitting those VPN's.

Francisco

maverick

@treesmokah said:

@maverick said: Thanks for all info. This is exactly how I see it, smaller, yet more expensive. I guess I'll have to test myself to see the difference.

Quality is better than Mullvad imo, clients, servers, support etc
Its worth additional few bucks per month, and if you do not need multihop and port forward, its on pair with Mullvad in terms of pricing(and cheaper if you pay yearly).

Will see. I was very fond of port forwarding specifically and Mullvad service in general last few months. To the point that I prepaid some time 'til August. Now this cold shower, and honestly I'm dissapointed. I wasn't expecting this move from them, that's why this topic is so interesting to me.

As you already commented, we now generally can't count on port forwarding being available going forward, so this eliminates any yearly option to save some bucks. The only question is will I be willing to pay twice as much for basically the same service, time will tell...

Hit them up on Twitter/Mastodon/Reddit, they will give you a free giftcard to check out their services.
They have gave me cards for a good few months because I was active in their "community", very nice guys.

Nah, I'm willing to pay for the first month to have time to properly test their service. What comes next is important, do I have a feeling that they're worth the price or not? I guess I'll have the answer to this question sometime late July.

But, thanks for the advice, I have enough time to change my mind and go cheap.

On the bright side, so many great VPS providers here, and some of them actually are quite generous with bandwidth, maybe I find an alternative solution for my use case.

maverick

It seems others are trying to fill the gap that Mullvad will leave after disabling port forwarding.

https://blog.azirevpn.com/port-forwarding/

Don't know anything about AzireVPN, just noticed the article.

Personally decided to give up completely on VPN's. So many good VPS lately, who needs VPN.

treesmokah

@maverick said:
It seems others are trying to fill the gap that Mullvad will leave after disabling port forwarding.

https://blog.azirevpn.com/port-forwarding/

Don't know anything about AzireVPN, just noticed the article.

Personally decided to give up completely on VPN's. So many good VPS lately, who needs VPN.

Thanks for sharing, time to take a deeper look at Azire and who's behind it.

r4h156

AzireVPN seems good; however, I don't like their port forwarding implementation compared to Mullvad's former implementation or AirVPN's. I ultimately settled on AirVPN, as it allowed for permanent, static ports and multiple ports per device.

Harambe

Azire are good, they're on par with Mullvad IMO.

emgh

@treesmokah said:

@maverick said:
It seems others are trying to fill the gap that Mullvad will leave after disabling port forwarding.

https://blog.azirevpn.com/port-forwarding/

Don't know anything about AzireVPN, just noticed the article.

Personally decided to give up completely on VPN's. So many good VPS lately, who needs VPN.

Thanks for sharing, time to take a deeper look at Azire and who's behind it.

Posted a link before, basically an ultra small company probably operated solo

If I remember correctly, about 1/30 of the size of PrivateVPN lol

treesmokah

@emgh said: Posted a link before, basically an ultra small company probably operated solo

A name is not enough, but I appreciate it anyways.

@emgh said: If I remember correctly, about 1/30 of the size of PrivateVPN lol

who?

emgh

@treesmokah said:

@emgh said: Posted a link before, basically an ultra small company probably operated solo

A name is not enough, but I appreciate it anyways.

@emgh said: If I remember correctly, about 1/30 of the size of PrivateVPN lol

who?

I never provided a name nor just a name.

https://www.allabolag.se/5590894175/netbouncer-ab

After server costs etc should be about enough to support 1 guy

No critique, just stating the obvious, they’re really really small

hyperblast

@treesmokah said:

@maverick said:
It seems others are trying to fill the gap that Mullvad will leave after disabling port forwarding.

https://blog.azirevpn.com/port-forwarding/

Don't know anything about AzireVPN, just noticed the article.

Personally decided to give up completely on VPN's. So many good VPS lately, who needs VPN.

Thanks for sharing, time to take a deeper look at Azire and who's behind it.

for me, azire has been very stable for years and i also recommend azire. however, i have not yet undertaken any in-depth background investigations on azire. are you now doing @treesmokah ?

treesmokah

@hyperblast said:

@treesmokah said:

@maverick said:
It seems others are trying to fill the gap that Mullvad will leave after disabling port forwarding.

https://blog.azirevpn.com/port-forwarding/

Don't know anything about AzireVPN, just noticed the article.

Personally decided to give up completely on VPN's. So many good VPS lately, who needs VPN.

Thanks for sharing, time to take a deeper look at Azire and who's behind it.

for me, azire has been very stable for years and i also recommend azire. however, i have not yet undertaken any in-depth background investigations on azire. are you now doing @treesmokah ?

i have found a few things so far(not bad), but i will continue digging.

emgh

https://www.netbouncer.se/services

https://www.netbouncer.se/infrastructure

https://www.netbouncer.se/about

emgh

Interesting that their company website uses Google tracking lol

maverick

@treesmokah said:
IVPN is generally less known than Mullvad, and way way smaller.
It is also more expensive. But yeah, there is no guarantee they will remove port forwarding the future if bad actors move there.
There is no way to make port forwarding good, from anonymity and security standpoint. Prepare that every provider will remove it at some point.

You were right, and we definitely didn't have to wait too long for that to happen: https://www.ivpn.net/blog/gradual-removal-of-port-forwarding/