I’ve have used my fare share of vpn providers over the years and NordVPN just seemed to be a no hassle service. Just wondering why a lot of people don’t like the service.
I’m pretty sure that everyone by now heard of the breach Nord had, but I don’t think we should completely disregard them. After the breach they posted the entire timeline of what happened and added new security steps like bug bounty program. I’ve not yet found any actual proof that they keep any logs and if a company as big as this were to be found to keep logs it would spread across all media really fast.
Let me relate what happened yesterday by way of illustration.
I had about half a dozen audio albums queued up for download; obscure releases, some 50 years old, typically with one or two seeders. The client is qBittorrent whose network interface is bound to NordVPN. (The Mac OS NordVPN client doesn’t have a kill switch and this ensures that torrent connections go exclusively through the VPN).
After hours without any data exchanged, I disconnected NordVPN (qBittorrent’s network interface settings updated accordingly). Immediately, data flowed, and an hour later I was seeding all the queued torrents. For me this happens regularly: current torrents with many seeders NordVPN works as expected; older less popular ones are subject to lower speeds or stall out completely.
Others have elaborated about a lack of port forwarding on Nord’s servers and I’ll leave it to them to further that discussion but, whatever the reason, if Nord must be disconnected to successfully torrent it defeats the purpose of having it in the first place.
Over aggressive marketing and affiliate programmes. They have come very close to being banned here.
misleading advertizements
Nord was great until they introduced their Tech Portal or Web of Protection nonsense, and now the one server I use the most, I can’t connect to since it conflicts with one of their annoying features I and most of us didn’t ask for but they forced on us, that Web Security Suite. Also can’t turn off all the features as it hangs when you turn off the Web one. SUPER COOL. WANT TO USE MY OBFUSCATED SERVERS FOR THE BAY, but can’t since you guys like EVERY SOFTWARE COMPANY, have to destroy your own products.
I treid a few vpns and every single one was terrible. The only good thing was switching to Albania to get free adless youtube.
So many sites accused me of being a bot. Either my streaming services would block a vpn, or the libraries would be the same. Shopping or paying bills was a nightmare bc again, they kept thinking i was a bot.
Made everything i tried to use it on basically useless.
I’d love to find one that works like the ads say, but i haven’t found one
Slow torrenting speeds.
Without port forwarding, you can’t send data to the swarm. This is antisocial behaviour and recognized as such by the architecture of bittorrent.
Others are punishing you by refusing connections when they discover this. This is automatic and built-in. Only when you have a lot of seeders you can go through enough fresh ones that enable you to finish the download.
When you have only a handful peers, everyone ignores you long before the download is finished.
For your usage pattern (rare audio), NordVPN is not suited. People who can use it download only popular stuff and don’t mind or notice it being slow.
The Mac OS NordVPN client doesn’t have a kill switch
Yes it does. I use NordVPN on my Mac.
And their customer support is very good.
They say categorically that they don’t. What makes you believe that they do?
Really? Didn’t they switch to RAM only servers?
Thank you for clarifying.
Thank you for this . I knew that port forwarding was important for keeping a healthy torrent but I did not realize I would be punished
What VPN would be more suited to that?
Any way to work around?
Correction: NordVPN IKE for Mac OS doesn’t have an application specific kill switch.
I read in other threads that Mullvad or Windscribe are good alternatives.
Yes, don’t use NordVPN. Use only providers which allow port forwarding. And use port forwarding, always. Don’t be an antisocial asshole.
It does. I checked with their support people and its built in to the product, you don’t have to turn it on.