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
    1·
    18 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

    • Alaknár@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      18 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.