tl;dr - Getting blocked left and right when using Mullvad’s servers, what’s the point if I have to disconnect from VPN for half of my internet use?
To preface this: I’ve been using Mullvad for years now and love supporting their work.
However, in recent months it has become more and more of a hassle for me. Here are some of the cases where I’ve been blocked from accessing sites/services:
My banking app - unable to login over VPN as of last month
Buying airline tickets - couldn’t process transactions
Adding items to Amazon cart - not even paying yet, just using the site prior to payment I’ve experienced issues and errors
Using Facebook Ad manager for my business - entire ad profile got restricted because they detected VPN use. No user account accessing the ad manager can use VPN or entire account gets restricted (confirmed from FB support)
Cloudflare, and sometimes Google too, lock me into an unending captcha loop
Lots of sites simply fail to connect
Even Aurora Store won’t work over VPN as of recently, for Christ’s sake
Minor inconveniences like websites’ UIs showing different locale than the country I’m connected to. Forcing to log in in order to view any public page on Meta. Also Instagram incessantly showing me Russian content even though I’m not connected to a Russian speaking country or anything of the sort. Netflix shadowbanning me by not showing most shows which should be available in the region.
So my question is: what’s the point? It starting to look like Mullvad can’t be relied on for daily use, as I’m hitting roadblocks everywhere and I’m forced to disconnect from VPN to solve all of the aforementioned issues.
I just read that enabling IPv6 can help, so I did that on desktop, but I see no such option on Android currently. I hate that modern internet use has become a vicious circle of jumping through increasingly difficult hoops.
PS: For anyone wanting to mention my use of Meta’s networks as a privacy-minded person, my explanation is that I’m simply too socially isolated without these, so I’m trying to balance privacy and social life. Take care of your mental health everyone! You need to factor that into your threat model as well.
All vpn’s have these problems to a varying degree. They have 656 servers online, find something in your country that works because they can’t blacklist them all.
A VPN isn’t the be all end all for privacy. I understand your trying to be more privacy concerned and that is great. For what you do, you may not even need a VPN, you don’t need to use a VPN 24/7. Keep in mind Mullvad is a privacy VPN, not a VPN meant for things like getting around Netflix.
What you can do is use the split tunneling feature and make it so one browser does not go through the VPN allowing you to use those services.
In terms of ‘what’s the point?’ you need to think about what your doing, and what you’d need a VPN for. I feel like you should focus on other ways of being private, like using a more privacy focused browser.
you are not the average consumer here friend. It probably isn’t for you if you’re having so much trouble. Though, I don’t understand what exactly you’re bothering with a VPN that emphasizes anonymity for if you’re already logged in to both facebook and amazon and use them daily. Seems like a strange thing to do business on the same device that you’re trying to keep anonymous.
Several months back I began seeing similar challenges using Mullvad. I almost never encountered these issues 2 years ago. I’m convinced its due to an increase in popularity and subscribers for them. A few years ago they weren’t as well known and so the big internet tech conglomerates weren’t always tracking the Mullvad servers like they are today.
The issue is what is Mullvad going to do about it? I’m hardly an expert when it comes to IT work. That said, the only thing I can think of that would alter the current course for Mullvad would be to have a system that could change server IP addresses multiple times a week. Frankly, I don’t even know if that’s possible, but that’s the only thing that could really alter the current problem of every major internet surveillance company knowing you’re on a Mullvad server when you knock on a website’s door.
What I can say is that 2 months ago I purchased a one year voucher for Mullvad, and the way things are going lately I’m beginning to feel sorry I did. And that’s coming from someone who generally has had nothing but praise for the company. They still block other’s from knowing your actual IP address, but this business of everyone knowing you’re on a VPN server is kind of ridiculous.
Get yourself a ubiquiti udm pro or build a pfsense router and then you can setup Mullvad on your home network and create a traffic rule where you can then designate which devices connected to your home network will have their traffic routed through Mullvad.
I’m currently getting a .7. I have SOME problems with captcha, they’re just tricky.
I don’t really know what effects this. I’ve always THOUGHT it has to do with ‘how much screen-scraping and video scraping I do’.
The ONLY thing that drives me crazy about Captcha is ‘How Quickly They Reset’. I click the Captcha. Then I spend 3 minnutes filling out the rest of the form. By THIS time, the Captcha has turned RED and I need to hit F5 to refresh the page. Drives me batshit.
I think that ANY developer that times shit out under 20 minutes should be drawn and quartered.
I left Mullvad because of the lack of port forwarding and now it’s much worse. More captcha, more blocking (and this time timeouts). But i won’t ever disconnect and let one byte pass through the firewall. I might consider static address.
Do these issues persist for you with other VPNs, or is it Mullvad specific?
I can confirm I’ve had issues with Aurora Store through ProtonVPN on my phone, not sure what’s going on there, so that at least isn’t Mullvad specific, but not sure about the other issues you listed, so I’d recommend testing another VPN to see.
I’m seeing the blockage by Aurora as well on a few Norwegian servers I use. I tried Proton VPN a few days ago and their servers seem even more aggressively blocked (but then again, they probably have more users and seeing more abuse). I’m expecting the same aggressive blocking of Mullvad servers soon.
I get your perspective. VPN usage in general is becoming more and more inconvenient because of more companies blocking their IPs. However, the alternative of not using a VPN and other semi-anonymizing tools is out of the question for me. Fortunately, I’m not seeing much blockage of Mullvad on the privacy-friendly services I use.
The most frustrating issue for me which seems to have started a couple of months ago is being unable to send emails. Major email providers constantly deny them now like gmail, etc.
This is happening on both my ASUS Merlin Open VPN client setup and Wireguard connections through iOS/Mac devices.
SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:550 <Mullvad server IP> is listed on Cloudmark CSI-Global.
I wish someone would come up with some crypto currency “proof of VPN” where everyone provided bandwidth and earned tokens by creating a vast untraceable constantly changing VPN network. No idea how that would work, but I would sign up.
I don’t think you understand all of the issues OP is articulating, not even google thinks I am a legitimate user when I attempt to access it, nor perplexity ai. Usually the first time you user most of these apps and they don’t recognize your presence so you get shut down but with mullvad you can’t even get websites to legitimize your presence, you are just denied a chance to connect.
Sadly both of them have already gotten a bad rep with Cloudflare, it seems. I get what you’re saying - I guess my rant is about the current state of the internet more than VPNs themselves. Didn’t use to be like this.
It has very little to do with blocking VPN vs blocking/flagging commercial IP addresses.
Some websites will block IP’s other sites like Cloudflare simply flag all non residential IP addresses as residential IP addresses are the vast majority of traffic.
Most spam comes from commercial IP addresses, and a public data center will only have commercial IP’s.