Which connection is more secure: “Relay Connection” or "Port Forwarding"

[Bennor]

There is this post (if the poster is accurate) which may answer or partially answer the question being discussed.

Port forwarding

@Rolgold, Setting port forwarding is not necessary to enable remote access. If you don’t set it, the WD servers will act as relay for the traffic going to your NAS in a secure way. If you set it, the WD servers are still used to track “where” you NAS is on the Internet, and the conntection is still protected by SSL, but there are fewer hops to go through, therefore you should get a slightly better performance.

The problem we users appear to face is there doesn’t appear to be much verifiable information from WD themselves on how exactly the My Cloud remote access works and what types of security it uses. One can, if their router supports it, see the logs on what ports the Relay Mode is using versus Port Forwarding Mode.

The question should be, yes we have a secure connection to MyCloud.com (using HTTPS) but what about the connection from that point (WD servers) to the remote My Cloud. How is that connection handled? Is it always over HTTPS and or some sort of VPN tunnel? Are WD’s servers always in the middle?

There is a workaround to one’s worries over the use of My Cloud ports. Go with a VPN server setup instead and bypass the whole MyCloud.com/My Cloud port settings entirely. Some consumer level routers offer free VPN server capability (usually OpenVPN and or PPTP) built right in. When using VPN one would access the My Cloud (generally) just like they would if they were at home/office with that My Cloud.