Here’s how you could have figured it out yourself:

Boot something else, read the logs.

Use a usb to boot some other operating system (or the same one) and access the logs of your system which will show where it’s failing and how.

Another person put that you could add nofail to fstab, you could also do this by moving the devices or services to nonessential branches of systemd.

Insurance I can believe but that much for registration is criminal.

Insurance rates are also criminal.

Stop reading this thread and buy this thing or something like it.

There are at least three things in between the wall and what the os tries to do before you start fiddling around in the settings. Did the thing you changed take effect? Did it stay in effect? Is the cpu actually doing what you ask it? Can you even trust what the cpu is reporting back to you? The motherboard?

Don’t just start fucking around with stuff before you put a watt meter in line. Everything else is just guesswork.

What were you spending the $1400 a year and $600 a year on?

Yeah there’s a lot of questionable stuff in the vpn service security auditing “space”.

That’s why I think it’s important to look at the raid outcome to see how their systems handle a real world situation (interpol tries to get logs and install logging in order to bust an alleged global csam ring using mulvads port forwarding, user privacy and anonymity protections to trade files over windows cifs (yes, network neighborhood, pedos apparently have a reputation for lack of opsec) sharing). The raid was unsuccessful because there were no logs and the police were unable to install logging capabilities.

After that failed operation, Interpol began requesting cdns and hosts block mullvads endpoints by ip. The point of that operation was to either force mullvads compliance with the investigation, to get them to drop port forwarding, or to force them to close down.

Because at the peak even cloudflare was blocking mullvad, it became very hard to use the service when browsing or for pretty much anything that relied on internet like rss or podcasts, shoutcast or even updating your computer.

Mullvad dropped port forwarding after rotating servers for months to attempt to beat the block and giving users lots of warning.

In the months after the block request was lifted, using the service for normal browsing went back to usual.

I remember all these details so clearly because I was a user of mullvad then and it was a relatively high profile and well publicized test of a vpn services’ capability to withstand government pressure.

As it turns out, even having no logs and no ability to add logging into your system doesn’t stop government from telling everyone else to make your system unusable.

It’s also pretty much the best possible outcome someone could expect of a service.

The point of this long ass reply is not to defend a company, although I think a person who was doing so could be forgiven for it in this case, the point is to help you understand what happened to make users of that service put their trust in it and why people like me are saying “maybe consider not ditching mullvad” when you ask what to use instead.

Cyberghost is wholly owned by kape, formerly crossrider, which was founded by veterans of Israeli unit 8200 (the cyberwarfare one!) and started out as a vendor of data harvesting middleware used by browser extensions.

The wisdom of sending today’s troubled teens to voorhees summer camp is hotly debated

Mullvad has been audited over and over again and found to not be logging.

Before they dropped port forwarding a police raid famously found nothing and confirmed that they were not recording any user information and operating as advertised, that is to say, operating in a way that not only didn’t log, but precluded the possibility of logging.

A raid where they get nothing is like an audit but it’s the real thing.

They dropped port forwarding because, in concert with an Interpol investigation, all the big content delivery networks and lots of websites to boot started blocking their endpoints.

There is not any vpn I’m aware of that has been physically raided by cops with a court warrant in hand and shown to have nothing and also dropped their possibly most popular service, port forwarding, in order to not have to comply with an investigation.

I used ivpn in the past and see it as basically an untested mullvad from ten years ago. Who knows how its people and technology would respond under the same circumstances? Could be good, could be bad.

It might be worthwhile to take a look at the nras argumentation against a firearms owners registry to better understand the recent history of searchable digital systems.

Information has not decayed over time for both our lives except on a scale that can be described as absolutely geologic.

As before, I am not making fun of you, but describing roads I have personally been down.

As I said above, the point is to help you understand that you approach the concerns you’ve voiced by recognizing that when you are in public you are being observed and clearly communicating privacy concerns to people around you.

As said way up above, I’m not trying to fight you, I’m trying to help you understand your own concerns in a broader context that has existed for hundreds of years rather than a scant decade because the context and history opens up more opportunities for you to take action than when you only consider the time that the flock camera system has been in operation.

If you get spooked, don’t worry about being made a hypocrite. Your security is worth more than your moral purity.

Because it’s a technology wielded by the most powerful to harm the rest of us.

I’m almost 100% I have a 390 card running with nvidia drivers on Debian stable. Will have to double check when I get to that device.

I is… okay if you’re doing piracy or trying to watch foreign media. It will keep the eyes of your isp off you but hasn’t been under the extensive scrutiny that mullvad has (which is why it can be used for such a broad set of goals imo).

When I used it I ended up having to switch servers frequently, that was about three years ago though.

Not a honeypot, but a target. I see.

Almost all my replies to you have been some kind of reference to anarchist thought in order to fish out what specific part of the big tent you consider yourself.

Allow me to be clear: both you and I are living in a fascist world where all of our needs are mediated through the hierarchy of the market or fascist government or some other organization.

To have our needs met outside those frameworks we would have to create the networks of support that fulfill them and forego anything not available within that alternative.

If either one of us were to start foaming at the mouth and deploying our secret Catalonian martial arts to kill every person we meet who gives support to the fascist governments across the world, we would be quickly overwhelmed and taken into custody.

Violence is not something to be flippantly suggested in a public forum. We are both so far within the belly of the beast that unconsidered struggle will prompt the formation of a cystic growth around us, insulating us from further effective action.

Of course noticing stuff will tell you about relationships. If I always stop at the same gas station at 12:30 and then lean on my truck eating a moon pie and drinking a coke a person can infer that I’m eating my lunch there.

Just like your example: if I always go to a specific house an observer is gonna reasonably assume I have a relationship to keep up in that house, even if it’s just making sure the last renters of the b&b turned off the gas.

You can’t stop living your life just because people might learn that you’re doing it. Actually you can but that’s a sign of mental illness. I’m not trying to make you feel bad here, if you are developing those types of tendencies please seek help.

You have a right and expectation of privacy when you’re (at least in the United States) on private property and out of plain view (except for the non-visible spectrum component of your presence) or on public property in a courtroom, bath, locker or changing room. When you’re on someone else’s private property and you recognize your rights are being violated somehow the expectation is generally that you will leave.

Cops and spooks have known for years and years how bad robot vacuums for example are but they havent wanted to use them as evidence because of how quickly and easily they could be excluded due to 4a violation. All they need is for the owner to testify that they never intended for the roomba to turn over information about their residence to law enforcement and the Eula is shredded.

To give you something to consider, there’s a sci fi book that describes people who take on the role of holding cameras and microphones in public as “gargoyles”. I think it’s Stephenson. Nowadays there are people who hold cameras and microphones in public who call themselves auditors.

Back in my day, there was a boom in the ownership of instant film cameras. Everyone attributed it to nostalgia and for sure in the present there are imitation Polaroids everywhere for sale marketed to that nostalgic feeling that now parents conjure up when using them, but they became parents because they were taking naked pictures of each other with instamatics because the trust they had put in each other wasn’t immediately mediated by an inscrutable, unpredictable device.

The point of that isn’t to get you into instants, but to help make it clear that the way you handle not knowing when you’re being watched or where something is going is by communicating with the people around you. Maybe it’s a phones in the fridge type conversation, you won’t know till you ask. The way you handle public interaction is by assuming it’s all being recorded.

Ah, if you knew that a fascist was a great poet you’d shoot him anyway, huh.

I guess that’s pretty convincing. I had better book a flight to malmo to kill a man and take his uh vpn service.

I’m sure the details will make more sense when I get there.

There’s a lot out there. Someone made a big chart to show the corporate relationships between them.

E: found it https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260103-vpn-industry-relationship-map#gsc.tab=0

So, a third time: under what circumstances and level of need would you accept a person paying a Nazi for goods or services?

Mullvad allowed port forwarding for many years until it was put into a position because of collusion between Interpol and the big cdns where it had to choose between cooperating with an investigation or retaining that feature.

The choice to drop an incredibly popular offering in order to avoid having to cooperate with the police is a testament to the trust component of the service.

When I said that no one is in that niche at the moment, part of that assessment rests on those events.

But also there are vanishingly few independent privacy focused VPN services that accept cash payment, don’t have accounts (and therefore don’t have the need for records that can be subpoenaed), don’t keep logs, are well respected and trusted, have open source clients, support shadowsocks and WireGuard, run an ad blocking dns and have had to resist the police in multiple high profile events.

I’m open to learn of them.

I assume because you made an equivalence between using an internet service and food you would be willing to buy bread from a Nazi? Again, what masters ideology in the necessarily hierarchical market would you accept?

I am not trying to convince you of something. I am trying to help you to understand why using the word privacy as a stand in for what you mean (which is anonymity, btw) is a bad idea.