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Comment by YetAnotherNick | Hacker News Reader

Because mullvad has no info who bought this, so if they get any warrant or anything asking to track someone, they could say they can't technically do that.

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But Amazon straight up gives camera access to Ring Doorbells to police without user consent or a court warrant. If you're paranoid and a Mullvad customer, you should probably treat Amazon as if it was a part of the US government.

Non sequiter. All the government could force Amazon to reveal is that you purchased that gift card. They can’t A) prove that you used it vs handing it out as a gift B) tie the purchase to a specific Mullvad account.

Non-sequitur, but no worries.

To a prosecutor, that means they have a conspiracy or even RICO case on their hands.

This got me thinking...

The government do get a limit number of potential users. Can this together with fingerprints, ping latency(?) etc. be used together with amazon info to narrow down the vpn user (in theory) or is that impossible?

For example, if mullvad only had 5 users in separate continents, could one measure the latency and crossreference with a amazon buy history to identify the vpn user?

You could probably guesstimate the Mullvad<->user ping by looking at the time between sequential chained requests. That would give a (noisy) circle.

Yes... You are better off with a prepaid credit card.

Unless, the card has a visible QR/bar code that is 1 to 1 with the hidden code. Then we are f*ed. Not mentioning this a criticism, I like Mullvad, bought this card a couple of days ago and thought about that case when buying it.

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