I am using linux, have a mullvad subscription and use qbittorrent. Because I read something about VPN-killswitches not being 100% reliable, I also bound the network interface from my mullvad-VPN to the qbittorrent-client.

Now something, what is kind of weird. I started a testrun over night with some legal torrents. In the morning I saw, that the downloads where finished and also seeding. The mullvad client said, that it was connected. But when I wanted to make a "torrent-IP-leak-test" online, I realized, that I couldn't open any website, because the "website couldn't be found" (firefox btw).

So I tried to ping 8.8.8.8, which worked, so I assume it must be something wrong on a DNS-level. In terminal I also checked if the Mullvad network interface was still connected, and it was. After I made a simple reconnect to the VPN-server via the MV-client, everything was normal again.

My first guess was, that this issue possibly occurs, because my ISP does an automatic reconnect in the middle of the night.

Now I'm wondering if that setup still can be considered safe. Did you experience similar problems? Is it a threat to privacy?

Using Debian if that's important.

~sp3ctre

+++EDIT+++

Observation 1: The source of the issue must be the automatic reconnect in my router (required from ISP) in the middle of the night. It encountered too, when I chose another reconnect-time. A manual reconnect in the router interface led to the same issue. Interestingly, pulling the plug from the router doesn't lead to it.

Observation 2: Since I wasn't able to check my external IP without being able to DNS-resolve these "ip-check-websites", I decided to go the direct way via IP of the website (found via who.is), which worked for some websites. Turns out, at least my IP-address seems not to leak (its my VPN-IP). These special torrent-IP-check-websites won't work at all, if the DNS can't be resolved at the beginning of the process (when putting the test-torrent into the list).

I will try if it makes any difference, when I turn of my alternative-DNS in the router. Will also try some other VPN-servers.

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[–] sp3ctre@feddit.org 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I am using the normal version of firefox.

I am currently not aware of a (torrent) leak-checking method, without using the browser. How would be your approach?

And Mullvad is very good with its killswitches.

Yeah, I heard good things about it. Just wanting to make sure, things are going well.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 16 hours ago

Tools like https://ipleak.net/ provide torrent leak checkers. You need a browser to view the results, but they provide a magnet link you use in your torrent client to assess what information it is giving out.

In theory if everything is set up right it should show exclusively IP/location information associated with your VPN

[–] LodeMike 1 points 23 hours ago

Personally I'd vnstat to check what interface peer connections are bound to.