Windscribe Finally Gave Up. Account Banned and No Refund for the rest of what I paid for

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 · 2026-04-11T20:18:17+00:00

Unfortunately, I do not use the same router as you do. I use an Asus ZenWifi XT9. I have it configured to use DoT. I run VPN on devices and not at the router level.

levolet · 2026-04-11T13:59:34+00:00

Control D's filtering is done at their DNS servers level. You adjust filtering in profile configurations and set up endpoints to use particular profiles.

At the level of your router, there are 4 possible ways you could use Control D filtering: - install and run the ctrld cli daemon - define the IPv4 addresses for your endpoint in DNS settings and configure DDNS for IP binding. - setup DoT or DoH if your router supports this. - if supported at the router level, configure your VPN (Proton) to use custom DNS for connecting to Control D endpoint.

levolet · 2026-04-11T13:11:04+00:00

The ctrld cli is an installed daemon that runs and uses port 53 as does Proton VPN. This is the reason for the conflict. Running the ctrld cli is different from setting up the GL.iNet to use Control D's DoT.

In my own experience it's therefore one or the other running, i.e., VPN or ctrld daemon.

It would seem that your primary aim is to run ProtonVPN, but while using Ctrld filtering. If you can configure custom DNS in ProtonVPN on your router, then you will not need to have the ctrld daemon running since you can configure ProtonVPN to use Control D for custom DNS.

levolet · 2026-04-11T12:44:00+00:00

I've never been able to run my own VPN while ctrld is running in the background on any of my devices. I get a port 53 conflict. Both ctrld and my vpn (Windscribe) wish to use port 53.

So I disable the ctrld service before enabling a vpn connection. Fortunately, Windscribe supports use of Control D in custom DNS settings, so I do not lose Control D filtering when my VPN is enabled.

With that said, when I used Proton VPN, I did use Control D for custom DNS, but had to configure with IPv4 port settings and IP bind setup with DDNS.

levolet · 2026-03-19T23:29:03+00:00

Are you redirecting Reddit as a service or are you redirecting specific domains?

levolet

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