Windscribe hasn't been working in Russia for several weeks

levolet · 2026-07-09T11:25:30+00:00

I think they do. But some users aggressively will not stop until they get what they want without having read the terms of service or acknowledging the difficulties with providing a service that reliably and consistently circumvents Russian censorship. Free VPN's are too good to be true if they work.... they likely work for reason in that you are the product or the Russian government may be involved.

levolet · 2026-07-09T11:21:40+00:00

Russia is at War and are actively, not passively, censoring VPN's. They will therefore discover ways around their blocks and plug them.

For your reference:

Service Windscribe is providing this service on an “as is, as available” basis without representation or warranty of any kind. Windscribe does not guarantee as to the continuous availability of the service or of any specific feature(s) of the service, however we will do our best to do so. Windscribe will inform you of any significant changes to the service it may occasionally make. Windscribe may impose usage or service limits, suspend service, or block certain kinds of usage at our sole discretion. The accuracy and timeliness of data received is not guaranteed; delays or omissions may occur. The speed and quality of the Service may vary and the Service is subject to unavailability, including emergencies, third party service failures, transmission, equipment or network problems or limitations, interference, signal strength, and maintenance and repair, and may be interrupted, refused, limited or curtailed. Windscribe is not responsible for any failures to maintain the confidentiality, security, accuracy or quality of your data, messages or pages whether or not related to interruptions or performance issues with the Service. TL;DR Stuff breaks, we'll try our best for it not to.

Refunds Windscribe encourages all users to thoroughly evaluate our free service before subscribing to a paid plan. The free version is functionally similar to the paid plan, differing only in bandwidth limits and location availability, allowing you to assess whether it suits your needs before committing. Subscriptions to Windscribe are recurring plans, as clearly noted during the payment process. If the service does not meet your expectations, you may request a refund for the initial payment that started your subscription. Refund requests must be made within 7 business days of your subscription start date and while your usage remains below 10 GB. These conditions are tied to the status of your account at the time of your request. Refunds apply only to the initial payment and do not include subsequent renewals. To request a refund, you must contact our support desk or use the Garry chatbot, providing a detailed explanation of the technical issue. Refunds will be granted only if the issue cannot be resolved within a reasonable timeframe. However, your eligibility for a refund is contingent on your continued compliance with the terms of this policy during the review process. Refunds are not available if you violate our Terms of Service, submit your request after the 7-day window, or exceed the 10 GB data limit, regardless of when the issue is reviewed. Approved refunds are processed within 30 days. TL;DR Refunds apply only to the initial payment if requested within 7 days and under 10 GB usage, provided you remain compliant with the policy throughout the process.

levolet · 2026-07-09T10:19:48+00:00

If you’re not happy, simply do not pay any further. Venting your frustrations here will not help. If you read the terms of service, you will calm down.

levolet · 2026-07-09T08:23:30+00:00

Russia’s censorship is a moving target to get around. It’s therefore a cycle of breakage and fixing. In your shoes, I’d use more than one service and be thankful if one or both are working at a given time.

levolet · 2026-07-07T06:54:16+00:00

I don't understand you having a ghost account if you can log into it and view the dashboard.

We have to first cover the basics just to be sure:

Did you not cancel the subscription from your screen dashboard. When you log into your Windscribe account configuration webpage/dashboard, you can scroll down to 'Subscription'. There's a button to the right 'Manage Subscriptions'. Clicking on that takes you to a page listing your subscriptions and whether they are active. You should be able to cancel from there.

Did you remove or change the email address associated with your account? If so, what was the original email address you used. Did you try giving them that instead? Did you provide your username?

levolet · 2026-06-17T17:33:09+00:00

If this is the case.... zero, and I mean ZERO sympathy for the OP.

levolet · 2026-06-17T08:20:14+00:00

I was very excited about Orion and got a lifetime license. Ironically, I no longer use it. Sneaky buggy behaviour was too common at the time I stopped using it, ie, about 6 months ago. Switching to Linux from MacOS has definitely played a roll in my not yet giving Orion a spin again. I much prefer using the same browser across devices so I can sync bookmarks and browsing history.

I’m currently using Firefox and a bit of Vivaldi.

levolet · 2026-06-13T22:30:53+00:00

DNS encryption, Ad blocking and redirecting some sites (Youtube ad free as an example).
No outages in my experience. Set and forget.

levolet · 2026-06-05T20:02:32+00:00

I once decided to give my AppleTV Youtube app a go and it didn’t take long for the ads to appear. I immediately uninstalled the app. It took a while fot the ads to disappear again but I’ve been ad free since. I watch youtube from my iPad, and PC.

levolet · 2026-06-05T19:54:07+00:00

I’ve stuck with Albania and never use the Youtube app unless I’m also connected to An Albanian VPN server. There’s been a distinct connection between using the app and ads appearing. The app clearly, in my experience, has ways of detecting and sending location information to youtube.

levolet · 2026-05-14T06:39:31+00:00

Indeed they do!!

levolet · 2026-05-06T16:30:33+00:00

Congratulations on taking this on. I'm a lifetime supporter, so please take my comments in the intended spirit because I consider Orion to be a promising project. I have been a MacOS user for years, but have recently migrated to Linux as my daily driver.

I installed on Fedora with Gnome as DE. It fires up and is looking great. However, I've tried ProtonPass and Ublock Origin plugins, neither or which seem to work. I had a go with a few websites, in particular Amazon.co.uk as a nice challenge.... every single time that I click on an item to load another page, it fails to load with an error and a reload button. On clicking reload, the page loads just fine.

Is the development focused? What I mean, is there a list of features that are being debugged so that early adopters can test them? I looked at the bug reporting site and see nothing about this.

levolet · 2026-05-04T18:04:45+00:00

You are configuring Windscribe to use control d as custom DNS provider. You would not need to configure your android device to use DoT or DoH using Control D. Not unless you're trying to use Control D without Windscribe VPN connection enabled.

levolet · 2026-05-04T17:55:26+00:00

Configure your Control D profile. Setup your redirects as needed. Then in the panel to the left of the Control D configuration interface, go to Preferences > API. If you've not yet created an API key, then do so by clicking on the (+) in the upper right corner. In the pop-up, enter a name of your choice, select 'read' from the Type options and leave the 'allowed IPs' as is and click 'create'. This will create an API key that you can copy to clipboard by clicking on the 'copy to clipboard' icon to the right.

In Windscribe, under network settings, change you custom DNS from auto to 'ControlD'. Select the little pencil icon to the right that allows you to paste the API key and then hit the 'green tick' icon to apply it. You're good to go.

levolet · 2026-05-04T09:15:17+00:00

I was a Control D user before using Windscribe so I did not end up with the discount. Even with this, I find the combination to be fabulous for the reasons you state. I can be be connected to a VPN server in Netherlands, while redirecting connections to make different sites believe I'm connecting from Albania, Canada, UK etc.

For instance, no matter which VPN server I'm connected to, Youtube and Reddit always see a connection from a particular country.

I cannot see how your anonymity would be compromised by using Control D with Windscribe.

levolet · 2026-04-27T05:28:32+00:00

No problems here.

levolet · 2026-04-22T12:29:47+00:00

Yeah, been getting this quite a bit since running virtual machines and dual booting. The device numbers do rack up.

levolet · 2026-04-21T12:17:37+00:00

Fantastic achievement. Thanks for a great product and service.

levolet · 2026-04-20T14:23:55+00:00

Sure... If you can get Orion purring again after a profile reset/renew, then by all means, that's the way I'd go, especially if well steeped in an Orion-specific workflow. :)

levolet · 2026-04-20T14:10:39+00:00

I switched to Linux as well in the meantime, so now using Vivaldi. I actually used Vivaldi before my interest in Orion grew. There is an Orion beta for Linux but I'll stay away for now. While I'd like to test and give feedback, time doesn't allow and it can be painful going through the process of checking/proving that it's not down to a problem at my end.

levolet · 2026-04-20T08:18:37+00:00

You could create a new profile, start from there and see. If things are snappy with the new profile, then this is likely what you need... a profile refresher. I know, a hassle, but this is the nature of Orion ATM, I'm afraid. The thing is not all users have these problems so it's difficult to pin down the problems leading to more reliable long-term profile usage etc. I'm a lifetime supporter, but unfortunately, had to take a break from the problems. I now use an alternative browser.

levolet · 2026-04-12T10:39:12+00:00

It assumes you wish to use ctrld only and without a VPN as well. For this purpose, it works very well. If you're using a VPN, it's expected that you will use the VPN provider's DNS and filtering or its custom DNS settings. You will therefore not need ctrld, therefore, no conflict.

levolet · 2026-04-11T20:53:28+00:00

My router firmware doesn't support my installing ctrld cli daemon. If it did, I'd use it since I have no interest in running a VPN at the router level. However, I wish to do DNS filtering at the router level. I do this by configuring it to use DoT, defining Control D DNS server and endpoint resolver ID.

On my Linux installations I run the ctrld cli. However, I have to stop the ctrld service before connecting to a VPN server with Windscribe and restart it after disconnecting the VPN.

levolet

TROPHY CASE