this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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I switched to windscribe last month because the proton CEO starting spewing politcal BS, and I wanted port forwarding that wasn't locked behind a shitty GUI.

As far as I was concerned setup was super easy, the VPN speeds were great, and port forwarding worked really nicely. The whole price for a fixed server and port forward, + unlimited data was a bit much (at $95/year) but for the ease of use and speeds I was getting, I was happy to stick with them.

My setup is a always-on server with a 1gbps connection, where yes, I fucking seed my shit, all of it. I have about 30TB of linux ISOs and counting, and it's rare that my combined upload speed is less than 1MBps, ever.

Which lead me to getting banned from windscribe with no notice or warning in the middle of last week. This lead to me having to spend tracker points to avoid HnR, and i'm also unable to grab any new ISOs until I find a new VPN provider that won't ban me for actually using the service full time.

I did shoot them an email (after talking' with their AI bot first), and they were actually helpful enough. The offered to restore support, so long as I promised to not torrent with them again (which, I honestly did promise not to. I'm not sticking with a VPN service that can't handle me actually using it for what it's advertised for) and they did unban the account. Whole email chain took about three days to get resolved.

My sticking point is that they still have instructions on setting up torrents on their own website, and that they specifically allow for unlimited data (with the plan i paid for) so long as it's just one user. I did not break those rules. After clarifying that in the support email, they still said that I was using too much data (despite the unlimited data advertisement) and that torrenting was not allowed on their service.

TL:DR: Windscribe bans you if you use a lot of data, and support says torrents aren't allowed, despite their website advertising such. Proof in the attached images.

If y'all have any other suggestions for a VPN that allow port forwarding i'd really appreciate it.

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[–] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (13 children)

Thanks for the warning!

I’m not trying to convince you either way, but can you point to the ‘political BS’ Proton guy said that made you flip? I use Proton and also veer hard left wherever politics are concerned, and I personally think the whole thing is way overblown. I may have missed something though, happy to hear otherwise, because in my understanding all he did was soft-endorse someone who identifies as republican at the moment

[–] troed@fedia.io 15 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Yeah I'm with you. I'm more pissed with Proton for disengaging via Mastodon than at the stupid CEO - but none if it is a good reason enough to opt for lesser services. Proton's doing good stuff.

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[–] SilentObserver@lemm.ee 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Odd. I’ve been torrenting with them for years at this rate. Even have my media server up 24/7 with qBittorrent running. I guess I’ll have to find an alternative in case this winds up happening to me.

[–] AZERTY@feddit.nl 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Same I've been using them for years without issue. This guy must have been using MASSIVE amounts of data.

[–] DaGeek247@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago

About 8TiB upload and 2TiB download over the course of this whole mess. I don't have exact numbers because WRT stopped counting for some reason, but I can infer based on January numbers.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Them calling it "unlimited" when there's a limit is wrong, but so is using all of the available upload bandwidth 100% of the time on a cheap home VPN service when you consider the current market prices for data transfer. Mine's limited to 2Mbps. Seems fair for $7/month or whatever it is.

Edit: Oh right it was 2Mbps. I spent 20 minutes surveying datacentre prices around the world to come up with that number, but bandwidth prices vary widely and might've changed by now.

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[–] kylian0087@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 days ago

Look in to I2P

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