- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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.
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The CEO of Windscribe is an Elon stan so you didn’t switch to a more left-leaning provider than Proton.
Holy shit, you’re not lying. The literal first Post on his Twitter
I suspect most CEOs are, The vast majority just have enough common sense not to ruin their relations with the 99 percenters.
Their own website says they allow p2p so I would see what your options are for getting a refund. If you purchased with a credit card, file a chargeback and include the documentation.
I’d recommend AirVPN. Here’s why I’d recommend them, in their own words:
No traffic limit. No time limit.
No maximum speed limit, it depends only on the server load
Every protocol is welcome, including p2p. Forwarded ports and DDNS to optimize your software.
As a rule, the more outdated a service’s website is, the better the service is.
It’s funny that you mentioned this, because the crappy website is one of the things that sold me on it. It reminds me of the old internet.
It’s also surprisingly affordable, I got a 3 year subscription for something like $60. I was during a sale.
Came to give AirVPN a shoutout too. Been with them since 7 years. Using both their client and native wireguard kernel module. Very happy.
AirVPN seems really good, I liked Mullvad but unfortunately they dropped port forwarding which really ruined them as a VPN service for Torrenting.
I switched to AirVPN about 6 months ago and I’ve been really happy with the service. Was previously using NordVPN, which was fine, but I was looking for a VPN provider that offered port forwarding and AirVPN does that. I don’t have hard stats on this, but I do feel that having access to port forwarding has improved my overall torrent speeds since switching.
Same here. Switched from Mullvad to AirVPN once they dropped port forwarding. I have had several issues with the Eddie client, but wound up dropping it in favor of gluetun and Wiresock with Wireguard configs and have had zero issues.
Wasn’t sure if this was the right place, but I figured someone should know about this. For what it’s worth, I would actually recommend windscribe if you don’t plan on doing torrents all the time, or you have sub 1gbps internet. Just sucks that I hit their “unlimited” internet limits on my home connection.
They have a page on their site about chargebacks. They’re confidant they’ll win them, but they still ban because it costs them money. I’ve done one anyways; as far as my reading of their tos goes, I was in the right. Might as well make this experience cost both of us money, instead of just them.
Their guide for using torrents with their service; https://windscribe.com/knowledge-base/articles/using-windscribe-with-torrent-clients/
Their FAQ on bandwidth and chargebacks: https://windscribe.com/knowledge-base/articles/why-did-my-account-get-disabled/
The fact that they have anti-chargeback wording on their public website speaks volumes. I bet they have anti-union posters in their breakroom too. Fuck this company!
Lmao I like the tl;drs on TOS page. Some of them are a little reductive, but it’s still better than making it a giant illegible block
They have a page on their site about chargebacks. They’re confidant they’ll win them
The portion about chargebacks refers to being outside the refund period, nothing to do with p2p or bandwidth caps.
Thanks for the warning!
I’m not trying to convince you either way, but can you point to the ‘political BS’ Proton guy said that made you flip? I use Proton and also veer hard left wherever politics are concerned, and I personally think the whole thing is way overblown. I may have missed something though, happy to hear otherwise, because in my understanding all he did was soft-endorse someone who identifies as republican at the moment
Here’s the exact post that got the Proton CEO in trouble:
Maybe Gail Slater really is a great pick for Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division. Frankly, I have no idea. But I won’t do business with any company that carries any water whatsoever for Trump.
He also went on Reddit and defended his statements by saying he wasn’t familiar with American politics and he’s sorry if he triggered people. So he’s claiming to be unaware of thing because he doesn’t engage in American politics, and at the exact same time, he’s using right-wing talking points like misusing the term “triggered” to mean “upset left-leaning people”. Something he could only have picked up if he’s lurking in right-wing spaces.
Everyone bases their opinion off that one out-of-context tweet, but if you actually take the time to evaluate the context you’ll find it’s extremely unlikely that Andy Yen (Proton CEO) is a “Trump supporter”. At worst, he is a rationalist who wants to continue Proton’s work with the US administration regardless of who is president, rather than having a tantrum and trying to virtue signal boycott and achieve nothing for 4+ years. Unfortunately a lot of people on the left would rather circlejerk in their online cope chambers like Lemmy and Bluesky rather than actually engage with reality.
deleted by creator
I’ll let you in on some reality about sysadmins: we generally don’t care what you’re doing until it causes problems. Clearly this guy’s amount of traffic did.
So yeah, absolutely. This is normal and reasonable.
It has to be against the rules for situations exactly like this where OP should be using a seedbox. But generally, they have better things to do than track down every little minor rule abuse.
Like playing their own pirated games while wfh. Or fixing other problems. Most teams of people who support shit like this are understaffed.
For instance, I’m sure that people are using my work network for all sorts of shit. I’ve seen people streaming Netflix to their desks. We lock down what we can, and don’t worry about shit until we have to because it’s causing a problem. Like years ago when someone streamed Netflix at an old location with I think only a T1 connection, saturated the network connection, and then no one could access anything on the network.
Most people don’t go around looking for reasons to enforce the rules. They use them when they have to because there’s a problem.
Perhaps murder is a bit extreme. It’s more like “we’ve noticed you’re taking woodchips from the playground. That’s not allowed. We wouldn’t mind if you were just taking a few chips, but you’ve taken 2 tons.”
[edit] But putting analogies aside, the service really should make rules and restrictions like this clear in advance. That seems like the real failing here, rather than the rule itself.
If the service is advertised as no data limit, aka “take as man woodchips as you like” they shouldn’t track back on it.
Windscribe encrypts your browsing activity, blocks ads, and unblocks entertainment content
so that was a lie
I think that refers to geoblocked content.
What’s concerning to me is, how do they know what you use their services for if supposedly they don’t keep any logs. https://windscribe.com/privacy/ https://windscribe.com/features/no-identifying-logs/
There is a big difference between “not keeping logs” and “dont have a way to check what you are doing right now”.
No logs just means they can’t check what you did last week but they can always check the traffic you are producing in that moment. If they see traffic from a torrent protocol they know you are torrenting.
Edit: they do claim they do “No Monitoring” so yeah by their own words they should not be able to tell you are torrenting.
No Monitoring
We don’t monitor your activity and have no way of seeing what sites you are visiting. We do store when you last used Windscribe as well as the total amount of data used in a 30 day period (to enforce free account limitations and to prevent abuse).
Like most any paid VPN service they need to track bandwidth usage somewhat. They can’t see what you’re accessing but they can see how much of whatever it is. Windscribe also offers a free 10gb/mo plan so they do track it for that purpose as well, much like any VPN with a free tier would.
Sure, they say that they monitor bandwidth usage but how do they know it was used for torrenting.
Because I told them I used torrents. Their FAQ literally has a page with instructions for setting up torrents. Still does. I didn’t think it’d be an issue for them.
You told them after getting banned so either they saw you were torrenting or gave you a bs explanation and banned you just for your data usage.
Probably the latter. Doesn’t matter which it is though; they advertise both on their website.
It sounds like they banned you for excessive usage. They allow at least 1tb a month because ive used that amount regularly with them.
It is a bit misleading for them to be calling it “unlimited” tho
It is a bit misleading
If it’s limited, it isn’t unlimited. That looks like a lie to me, and not “a bit misleading”.
Which is why they said the issue was torrenting and not using too much data. It’s an unlimited plan and they would never think to put a limit on data usage. They just object to torrenting and it’s pure coincidence that they only object to that when someone is using a lot of data.
It’s not “a bit misleading” for them to call it unlimited and then ban people for using too much data, it’s extremely misleading, almost bordering on scammy. If I were OP I would’ve done a chargeback and switched VPNs instead of begging them for an unban. They deserve it for lying and trying to deceive customers. Vote with your wallet (and chargebacks) if you want companies to stop doing shitty shady like this.
it’s extremely misleading, almost bordering on scammy
It’s neither of those things either. “Misleading” indicates their representations were technically true, but it sounds like this is just a straight up lie.
That’s true, they outright lied, it’s not one of those technically true situations they outright lied and said unlimited and ban people for going over an arbitrary data limit, not even temporarily cutting off connection, outright suspending their accounts.
The unban was just to check if the refund process would go through. Since it didn’t then I did a chargeback.
That makes sense, best to try and give them a chance before going the ugly route. I do try and point this out since there are a lot of people who believe you should never EVER do a chargeback since companies, especially the sleazy ones claim it’s not allowed or broadly illegal (likely because if people were more inclined to do it, they’d be in big trouble).
I don’t think this is misleading. Misleading is when you use technically true facts to draw someone towards an incorrect conclusion. Calling a plan unlimited then having a limit is more like fraudulent if you ask me.
Buried deep in the terms of service where nobody will ever read will be a “reasonable use” clause. That’s the justification for why it wouldn’t count as a fraud.
I do agree however that as a consumer we are constantly being defrauded by corporations free to do whatever they wish without repercussions.
Buried deep in the terms of service where nobody will ever read will be a “reasonable use” clause
Their ToS is pretty succinct and clear. There’s no “reasonable use” or any similar wording, and also no wording in regards to p2p or data caps.
Beware of the leopard
“a bit”. this post just proves they are lying all around
You’re going to be very hard pressed in finding a VPN that supports torrenting. People abuse it. That’s why mullvad pulled port forwarding support.
Additionally people misinterpret what they can do even if their VPN does support torrenting. It’s still illegal to use their service to torrent anything other than legal torrents…which almost no one does, which is why VPN providers aren’t lining up to show their support for the torrent network.
There are no services available to you that allow you indiscriminately to torrent illegal content. It’s always illegal and against TOS to torrent someone elses IP.
Every part of your comment is wrong or false. Air, O, Proton. There’s 3 that are “mainstream”.
There’s multitudes of smaller providers that allow it.
Mullvad removed it because of CP and extremist content being hosted behind mullvad. It had nothing to do with torrenting as they had no problem with it for the many years.
Many countries don’t even acknowledge DMCA. Some have their own that have higher criteria for enforcement like the NL, others just don’t care. Hosted many things out of Vietnam, Kosovo, Hungary, etc.
It’s evident to me that you’re either stupid, or lack the ability to read. You make up your mind on which is which.
It’s not possible for a company, no matter where they are in the world to permit users to do things which are illegal. Period. Proton cannot allow their users to use their VPN to use the torrent network to download IP. As with any company anywhere in the world. To live in some state of reality to be unable to acknowledge this is the most insane shit I’ve ever seen in my life. You literally are living outside of reality here… The sheer level of stupidity here is fucking insane to me, so I’ll try one last time to put it into perspective for you;
I’ve said “Murder is illegal, no matter where you are. You can’t just kill people” and you’ve said quite unironically “GLOCK allows their customers to kill people, they’ve made murder legal.”
Do you genuinely not see how fucking idiotic and stupid you sound?
Many countries don’t even acknowledge DMCA.
This also has nothing to do with DMCA–which is a US law and cannot be enforced in other parts of the world. As I’ve said from the very beginning, theft of IP (torrent or otherwise) is individually illegal in all but less than 5 countries on this planet… It doesn’t matter how you do it, or where you do it. It’s always going to be illegal because all of the countries from which these VPN providers originate, it’s illegal in those countries.
I’ve done my very best to explain this very simple concept to you–that you can’t break the law just because you’re behind a VPN and they don’t actively pursue you for every little infraction–but if you still don’t understand it after all this, then do us both a favor and just take a vow of silence for the rest of your pitiable life.
I mean Jesus Christ.
