technology

okay sorry to revive this thread but I'm curious what accepting cash really buys you in terms of privacy in a vpn provider for a reasonably normal person. I like the idea of it but I'm not sure it's all that much in concrete terms?

Certainly it could reduce your profile a bit in terms of like, mass surveillance via credit card processors or banks, but those don't seem like the lowest hanging fruit in terms of tracking VPN use.

If you are totally off the grid, don't have/use credit or debit cards or bank accounts, don't have home internet, etc. then obv cash is a huge boon practically and enables you to keep doing those things and still have access to a vpn.

I guess maybe the threat model is "cops (or copyright narcs or whoever) discover material they don't like online" -> they try to track down the user posting it -> they see its a mullvad vpn and either give up that particular line of inquiry or try to subpoena a stone and get nothing identifiable (would have to compel mullvad to assist in tracking you rather than just give up info they already have, an). And if you paid cash you have slightly less to lose than any other method, since you don't just have to trust their no-logs policy, they simply don't have as much info on you to give up even if compelled to correlate your outgoing traffic to your user account?

So its subpoena insurance mainly? I guess that is more concrete than I initially thought, but curious if anyone else has more thoughts.

Edit: also calyx institute will do cash but only at in-person events and honestly idk if they do many/any besides defcon which is... not probably very private. their vpn is free though with bw caps