Memes

As clear as I can make it out, it seems like it was related to a search warrant that was executed on Mullvad.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/4/20/mullvad-vpn-was-subject-to-a-search-warrant-customer-data-not-compromised/

Because just a little over a month after the news of the failed raid, there was news of them removing port forwarding.

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/

Emphasis mine.

Unfortunately port forwarding also allows avenues for abuse, which in some cases can result in a far worse experience for the majority of our users. Regrettably individuals have frequently used this feature to host undesirable content and malicious services from ports that are forwarded from our VPN servers. This has led to law enforcement contacting us, our IPs getting blacklisted, and hosting providers cancelling us.

The result is that it affects the majority of our users negatively, because they cannot use our service without having services being blocked.

The abuse vector of port forwarding has caught up with us, and today we announce the discontinuation of support for port forwarding. This means that if you are a user of forwarded ports, you will not be able to add or modify the ports you have in use.

They made a smart call that has probably increased the long term privacy of their users.

People were using port forwarding to host illegal shit, and governments were getting pissed off about it. Mullvad has been able to prove in court that they don't keep logs, but that's not a perfect deterrent; a properly motivated government, perhaps if somebody is using Mullvad to host CSAM, might attempt to legally force Mullvad to put logging in and add anti-canary clauses.

Preventing port forwarding keeps customers as consumers rather than hosters, and avoids this issue.

And that proves what exactly? Swiss law required them to hand over an IP address. Swiss ptivacy is not absolute. They have laws. An IP address didn't grant them access to the encrypted emails. Proton openly admits they had no idea who the user was. The activist should have used a VPN, which Proton also offers as a service, and then whatever activity trail they linked to the IP would have died at Proton's VPN network.

Protonmail then went to court, and got the law changed so it doesn't happen again https://www.reuters.com/technology/proton-wins-swiss-court-appeal-over-surveillance-rules-2021-10-22/

Until Gmail/Hotmail decides your IP is a spammer and forever you have deliverability issues from then on

I trust their privacy claims but if you backup your email and calendar you can just as easily move elsewhere if Proton does go down. Having only one provider can make things a lot easier to manage.

However, if you go fully into Proton for everything, you're placing your trust into an entire stack of services and it can end up a single point of failure.

Yeah, I know

The point is that Proton offers good service at a reasonable price, and for me that's it, that's perfectly fine

Tutanota is in Germany, which is part of the 14 Eyes global surveillance network. Protonmail is located in Switzerland, not currently part of any such intelligence agreements. Switz courts are also much less willing to approve search warrants.

The lock in and the lies. The first being your inability to read your emails in another client. Second is the lie that it's secure when email is inherently not second. It's making a false promise.

Oh and I forgot the new issue, being that you can't zoom mail, which is infuriating.

Disclaimer: I pay for Tutanota and have for a few years. But I'm tired of it. Will switch to another season once K-9 becomes Thunderbird for Android

According to this blog post, they don't seem to 🙂 https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/

They very recently stopped supporting it.

Thx!