Looking for some clarity regarding safe torrenting and privacy/dns leaks

[Aronos 0]

I'm wondering what sort of risks there are in torrenting with AirVPN. I've looked around a fair bit to find info on the topic, but many of the threads I see regarding this issue are as many as eight years old and I'm not sure how relevant they are today. I used to torrent a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago or so and to be honest, I don't really have that much of a need to do so today. That being said, I'm wondering how safe it actually is in the event I want to download something. I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not the anonymity is reliable enough to really consider it. Call it paranoia or maybe just a healthy does of caution/skepticism.

Much of what I see suggests that the greatest risk of being caught is DNS leaks. After looking around a bit, this is what I've done so far -

- I have forwarded a port through https://airvpn.org/ports/ and I have told qbtorrent to use that port
- I have changed the connection from UTP and TCP to just TCP
- I have disabled all of the following:

"use different port on each startup"
"use UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding from my router"
"Enable local peer discovery to find more peers"
"Enable peer exchange (pex) to find more peers"
"Enable DHT (decentralized network) to find more peers"
"Autostart qbtorrent on Window's startup" (To prevent it from starting after a restart and automatically transferring data before I start AirVPN and Network Lock is enabled)

I'm using a VPN in the Netherlands and always have Network Lock enabled on startup. Also, while much of what I read about Anonymity Mode said that it was overkill, I enabled it anyway and really didn't see any noticeable slowdown. After running some DNS leak tests, I haven't seen more than 1 server during an extended leak test at https://www.dnsleaktest.com. However, I'm not sure how much confidence I have in this though simply because the test only lasts maybe 30 seconds and I'm not sure it's an accurate representation of any actual DNS leaks that might occur over time. I also wasn't actually running the test when anything was transferring in qbtorrent so I'm not sure how the results might vary when anything is uploading/downloading.

I guess my biggest concern is suddenly getting hit with a DMCA and like $20k+ in fines out of the blue. Even though some people just seem to get notices to stop, the assumption I might get a free pass isn't exactly an expectation I want to rely on.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

3 hours ago, Aronos said:

Much of what I see suggests that the greatest risk of being caught is DNS leaks. After looking around a bit, this is what I've done so far -

The greatest risk is IP leaks, as in, you're using the internet with your ISP. IPv6 leaks are the most common, they occur when IPv6 routing is not properly set up. Rarely IPv4 leaks happen, too, but it's usually called misconfiguration and not a leak. DNS leaks are unimportant when it comes to torrenting because torrent clients use plain IP addresses to interconnect.
 

3 hours ago, Aronos said:

"Enable local peer discovery to find more peers"
"Enable peer exchange (pex) to find more peers"
"Enable DHT (decentralized network) to find more peers"

Why? Reenable it, or torrenting turns into a centralized experience for you where the trackers know everything. They know everything, anyway, but still, DHT, PEX and LPD help a great deal in further decentralizing torrenting, especially knowing that most public BT trackers block VPN IPs.
 

3 hours ago, Aronos said:

Also, while much of what I read about Anonymity Mode said that it was overkill, I enabled it anyway and really didn't see any noticeable slowdown.

Anonymous Mode of qB is not what most people think. It does not make you literally anoymous, it simply omits or changes certain information qB sends out to other peers, making it for example more difficult to identify your client as the same across different torrents and/or connections.

All in all, when torrenting over VPN, your biggest concern should be your ISP IP showing up on wherever you connect to. In connection to OpenVPN, this is, as written, most likely IPv6. Running ipleak.net helps as it shows IP and DNS leaks.

One more recommendation: In qB settings > Advanced, bind qB to the tunnel interface. TAP-Windows on Windows, utun0 on macOS, tun0 on Linux. It's not exactly a kill switch or even a NetLock, but should there be no VPN connection on these interfaces, qB just won't be able to connect as well. Logically, if the connection fails during runtime, qB loses all connections, too.

[Aronos 0]

Thanks for the reply. I disabled IPv6 pretty early on after transitioning to OpenVPN.

With regard to binding qb to AirVPN, I'm not sure how to do it. This is what I see:

[Flx 76]

12 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

Why? Reenable it, or torrenting turns into a centralized experience for you where the trackers know everything. They know everything, anyway, but still, DHT, PEX and LPD help a great deal in further decentralizing torrenting, especially knowing that most public BT trackers block VPN IPs.

If the OP here uses private trackers (e.g. torrentday filelist) he/she may get flagged for it.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

9 hours ago, Flx said:

If the OP here uses private trackers (e.g. torrentday filelist) he/she may get flagged for it.

This is something to consider, of course. But in my experience, private trackers unwilling to allow it forbid it by torrent file.