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 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

Yeah, did that. Couldn't DNS-resolve the website because of the issue, but going via direct IP of the "check-website" (found via who.is) made me at least check my IP, which turned out to be the VPN-IP. Torrent-IP-Checking won't work, because torrents seem to need at least DNS-resolving at the beginning of download.