The Shadow terms of service prohibit VPN use, and state “Committing the following activities in this article may cause your account to be terminated“
The listed reason is that you might make it impossible to access your shadow without a reset.
However it only says “VPN”, not “System-Wide VPN”; A browser extension VPN could never affect your shadow’s functionality.
The blanket ban on VPNs seems kinda weird. I’ve tried the VR Alpha and had to factory reset my Shadow because of a bug, but it seems odd to me that-
- Me,
- Messing up my Shadow…
- Is a violation of TOS.
It’s not like a person would have to involve Shadow customer service to reset their Shadow, you just use the website and reset it. I’m not saying people should try to use a system-wide VPN, but I’m also not suggesting people should to try use Shadow on a 2.4GHz wifi connection…
There should be a difference between a user creating a bad experience for themselves, and breaking TOS. This seems like it should be a warning, of like, “Hey, if you use a system-wide VPN it will probably bork your Shadow and force a reset”, rather than a TOS violation.
Is it piracy related? It’s already against the TOS to use your Shadow for illegal activity, so is that not enough? And Tor isn’t included in the rule, nor is it against the TOS to use proxies, so I don’t understand the VPN rule as it concerns piracy and whatnot.
“But, come one, Tor and Proxies are PRETTY MUCH VPNs, right? That’s just semantics.”
Lol, no. They’ve very different technologies.
I’m not even a VPN fan myself. They’re highly over-rated.
Still, this rule seems strange.
Best answer by Jim29er
I see the issue called out in this “Rules & Restrictions” article:
https://help.shadow.tech/hc/en-gb/articles/360000455174-Rules-and-Restrictions-on-Shadow
...but not in this “Terms of Use” one:
https://shadow.tech/terms-of-use
My take, is that Blade is not going to “seek out” banning accounts due simply to the use of VPNs, but rather wants to “keep the option open” if that activity were to coincide with something demonstrably nefarious or harmful, which would be on a case-by-case basis. Like you say, the self-inflicted wound of breaking the VM’s network connectivity can be recovered via a reset, so why would they care.