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Comment by mig39 | Hacker News Reader

I just signed up for 3 months of Mullvad a few weeks ago. So far so good. Didn't even need my name or anything. I paid anonymously.

It's super fast with wireguard.

No affiliate links, no special discounts, no special sales prices. No coupon codes. Just privacy.

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What's the point of paying anonymously if you are presumably going to be connecting to it from your IP anyway? Unless you're using it with another anonymizing option first.

If you are using it from behind a CG-Nat this could be a very effective form of privacy.

Not at all. Unless there are tons of people on that network who are using the same VPN as you, it would be trivial to figure out the endpoint.

> Unless there are tons of people on that network who are using the same VPN as you, it would be trivial to figure out the endpoint.

This is why I hedged my statement with "could be". While it's unlikely that this other condition is met, it is possible.

Yes, you're totally right. If the conditions are met that you are 1) behind a CG-NAT, and 2) a statistically significant sample of other users on that CG-NAT is using the same VPN node, then yes it "could be a very effective form of privacy" in this extremely unlikely and contrived example. But in most real-world cases, it is not.

Does your ip come attached with your name?

If investigated by law enforcement.

In court precedent is an ip address doesn't equal a person.

No, but in a subpoena it is.

...because that IP address is just the public side of a NAT'ing router, likely a wifi router.

If you're logged into a VPN, that IP is much more likely to be you, since you had to authenticate to it and you're very unlikely to share the account particulars like you would your wifi password with friends/family/neighbors.

This particular discussion surrounds anonymously using a VPN. In this scenario, your VPN does not know who you are.

So, even though you have to authenticate, your privacy is still preserved.

Sadly I cannot remember the specific case but seem to remembeer at least one occasion where it did

Yes, in standard consumer ISP cases, it literally does.

How do you pay anonymously?

Giftcards or crypto. You could even mail cash to pay for it.

You can snailmail them cash along with a random token you get from their website/account management page, and that gets credited to your account.

https://mullvad.net/en/pricing/

Every single piece of postal mail is scanned front/back. If you've signed up for the USPS's delivery notification stuff for your mailbox, that's where the scanned "previews" come from. And it's notable how often those previews show a pretty good representation of what's inside, even without messing with the preview image in an image editor to play with the levels/contrast/etc.

So yeah, if you'd like to hand the feds evidence you're using a VPN, go right ahead, mail Mullvad cash?

I would assume the person mailing them cash is not sending it from their mailbox on their property, but instead a public access mailbox in a town or city.

If you’re worried about being actively followed by the feds and they’re tracking you drop that letter, you have much, much more to worry about than your VPN usage.

They have a variety of crypto options. You can also mail money directly to their office and if you are in Sweden you can buy physical vouchers in-store at several places (which can be paid in cash.)

(Just a happy customer.)

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