We tasked the Netherlands based security firm Radically Open Security (RoS) with performing the third audit towards our VPN infrastructure.
"RoS discovered a number of new findings, and we would like to thank them for their thorough and detailed report. They stated , amongst other things that: that whilst they found some issues, that: “The Mullvad VPN relays which were the subject of this test showed a mature architecture…” and “During the test we found no logging of user activity data..”
If you're doing a P2P related activity over a VPN (or otherwise), port forwarding is very important for improving speed or enabling the service at all. That's because your router blocks incoming traffic from certain ports by default, ports that will be used with a P2P connection. To get around this, you can 'forward' a port that can be used for said P2P activity, letting your router know that the traffic you expect to see from a specific port should be let through.
You can simply leave port forwarding to your personal router, but if you want to stay anonymous while participating in P2P connections, then you'll want to use a VPN service. If a VPN service doesn't utilize port forwarding, then any P2P connections you use will either be straight up impossible, or very slow. For example, you wanted to host a gaming server without giving away your actual IP address, then a VPN with port forwarding is desirable. The same can be said for torrenting.
I was so happy with MullVad until the port forwarding removal. €5 a month regardless and a very easy to use website. I moved to a 3 year purchase of AirVPN but it's a lot more finicky to use.
A few months ago. They said that hosting companies and other providers were refusing to work with them if they continued with it as a feature.
It's just too easy to abuse by bad people using it to host very questionable content. Lots of people then moved to ivpn and then they removed it too, for the same reasons.
The way they did port forwarding was so rock solid and stable being able to assign a port to your account and have it apply to any endpoint… but now that isn’t there I was forced to switch to ProtonVPN. Also my latest DL speeds with the closest node in my area with Mullvad WireGuard config is much slower than proton… sigh. I’ll keep what I already paid for on Mullvad but I won’t be renewing. 😢
At least they handled it well with plenty of notice and hassle-free refunds for anyone who requests them. I was sad to go but still support the company.
yes, but only if you pay, and the port you get isn't static, so it changes every certain number of minutes, so you need to find or juryrig something to auto update your torrent client to the right port.