A lot of my files were shitty 480p versions of movies from the Napster days. Now they’re all 1080p, with a few 720p exceptions (mainly tv series episodes). All in all 500 something files in total. Now just watching uTorrent slowly download them all. Hopefully my VPN keeps the eyes off of me…
Most quality VPNs will have a killswitch built in and enabled automatically, with nothing to setup, but they are notoriously unreliable and can fail. The key term people want to search for is “bind.” You want to bind qBit to your VPN. If your VPN isn’t working, qBit doesn’t have a connection. Most decent, privacy first, “no log” VPNs (Mullvad, Proton, AirVPN, iVPN, etc.) will provide instructions on binding. This is above and beyond their built-in killswitch.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t recommend these, or that people shouldn’t use them, but IMO, people should at least be warned to search for the following, so they can make an informed decision:
NordVPN also doesn’t have port forwarding so you’re unlikely to be able to seed anything back. This’ll get you banned from private trackers and goes against the whole concept of torrenting.
Yeah, Mullvad stopped offering Port Forwarding as well, along with iVPN (I think) and some others. I believe AirVPN is the recommended VPN which still has PF (I may have iVPN and Air mixed up). I understand one of the reasons why they stopped supporting PF (it allowed sick f*cks to share illegal child content with others), but it also pretty much destroyed my ability to find and complete a download of old/er files that I normally didn’t have a problem with, and, like you mentioned, I could no longer seed back. It’s the sole reason why I started using usenet. I could have tried one of the other VPNs I mentioned (Proton & Air, which I believe both have PF) but I chose to stick with Mullvad and add usenet instead, which I’ve really liked.
Yes I was actually sad to leave Mullvad, and the developer was pretty cool about giving refunds, so I’d definitely go back if things changed in the future.
AirVPN does have port forwarding and is what I wound up switching to. So far, everything is working fine and there are a decent number of servers available.
Glad that worked out with AirVPN, they’re the main alternative to Mullvad that I was considering back then. I may still try them in the future. Yeah, I was shocked that Mullvad was so cool about handing out refunds. I’ve read about many other VPNs that wouldn’t consider that. I guess with Mullvad being the official rebranded Mozilla VPN they can afford to let some people go and still have a smile about it.
Is this new in the past few months? I was using mulvad with qbitorrent a few months ago and it was uploading.
You can download and upload with no port forwarding. For some torrents you might not find peers, but whats even worse you will seed less
I can’t recall when it actually stopped working (maybe around 3 months ago?), but here is the announcement: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports
Fairly soon after they removed PF, I searched for a show that was less than a year from release, rated over 80% on TMDB & over 8.0 on IMDB, and pretty popular. I couldn’t complete a full season of it on any one format (720p, 1080p, x264, x265). Probably around 10 incomplete versions in qBit. Never ran into something that bad before, on a somewhat recent show. Started using usenet and had my files within an hour or so, in the format I wanted. I understand and support their decision, but it was a very good feature to have. If your looking for new material, PF won’t affect you. I’ve read people suggest Tailscale as a way to supplement Mullvad (if you’re running a server and want to remotely access it), but I know little about it.
That was lucky timing for me! I was updating all my media around June.
Fair. I do all of my setup manually these days (networkmanager on linux, openvpn client app on the rare occasion i’m on windows, not a mac guy so no clue there). I implement one using a firewall but that is more complex than most people want. Still, as long as it is done in addition to the qbit network interface bind, then it’s not bad to also set a VPN killswitch.
Agreed. This is what I was referencing in the first bullet about network interface
1 - Fair points. TBH, I had my doubts about that initially but have been with them the whole time (before and after kape acquisition). FWIW, I have not seen any change in PIA service quality. In fact, I have seen them add Wireguard support and release all of the code as FOSS (see here). I agree that Kape did some sketchy shit in the past but from what I have seen over the last several years, they are not doing anything sketchy in the VPN/technology sector part of their business (aside from maybe advertising which I consider to be separate). I don’t even really think about Kape anymore tbh. If they were ratting me out, I would have had enough dcma notices to start a bonfire with by now.
2 - I had not been aware of that. I haven’t used them in a few years. Any sort of data breach definitely sounds bad but since I haven’t reviewed the details, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions either.
I like Mullvad from a tech and privacy standpoint but IMO they are a bit on the expensive side compared to some of the other options. Nord and PIA you can usually get multiyear deals on periodically and that can drastically lower the overall cost ($80 for a 3yr VPN plan = monthly about 2.22 USD/2.04 euro vs 5 euro/month for mullvad). Not saying price is the be-all-end-all or that Mullvad is unaffordable but it is going to be a consideration for many, especially people that already don’t want to shell out for a paid VPN over the free ones. With that in mind, I think there is still value in PIA (and possibly Nord - I haven’t reviewed the details of what exactly was breached - e.g. vpn service vs blog server vs etc, what data was exposed, what steps they took to address, etc). There are many other no-logs vpn options besides Nord, PIA, and Mullvad out there, I just don’t have any personal experience with them.
I should have also mentioned that I otherwise thought your initial post was good.
At least with Mullvad (and I imagine the other three I mentioned), there is nothing to set. It’s already there in the app, and automatically enabled after install. The only thing that can be done is to turn it off.
Understood. I was just providing the specific term (“bind” or “binding”), used by VPN companies & users, for anyone else who wants to search for instructions on properly connecting qBit to their VPN.
It’s not my place to fault or criticize you or anyone else for choosing to go with Kape/PIA (or Nord). I just think people should at least know of their past. For me, there is zero chance of me returning to PIA. Someone tells me the girl I’m interested in cheated on their past boyfriend, or tried to somehow spy on or sabotage him? Zero chance I’m getting involved. Too many other good/better options available. My brother has had no issues dating cheaters. To each their own. None of my business why others make the choices they do.
It’s not necessarily that they had a data breach, it’s how they handled the situation that many people found troubling.
Same with this. I don’t fault you for trying to save some money. Everyone has their own situation to deal with, and I’ve been “there” before. For me, I’m not rich or a boomer, but I’m old enough now and have enough disposable income that I make decisions that work for my privacy and reliability requirements. I see something that cheap now and I ask myself, “why is that so cheap?” It could still be a good product, but I know enough to at least ask the question & research. I also don’t pay for long term, multi-year deals anymore (I had about six months remaining on my PIA deal when I “noped” out of being a part of Kape’s acquisition), but I still try not to be an idiot and just give away money either. As an example, I buy the Mullvad gift card, with a scratch-off code from Amazon, $29/6mo ($4.83/mo) or $57/12mo ($4.75/mo). No euro exchange rate or transactions fees, etc. My preference is to incentivize my favorite companies to stay in business, providing the service and continual upgrades that I want and expect, like the following:
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/we-have-successfully-completed-our-migration-to-ram-only-vpn-infrastructure
-and-
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/moving-our-encrypted-dns-servers-to-run-in-ram
When people talk about “zero logs,” I’m not aware of anything better than having everything run through RAM. Going out to lunch/dinner or watching a movie is roughly $10 to $20/person these days. I’ll happily pay a couple extra bucks a month for a VPN with this kind of privacy and continual upgrade in service, or from the other three I mentioned (and I believe Mullvad is still even the least expensive of the four). No criticism from me on your choices though.