ANSWERED Copyright Infringement notice while vpn active

[WardenGOW 0]

Hello, I received 2 copy right infringement notice while vpn was active. The IP in the email is my IP. I have network lock on. In my bit torrent software, Enable UPnP/NAT-PMP is not enabled. I have not made any firewall adjustments while the vpn is active with network lock. I went to ipleak.net to check if my ip was being leaked and everything is under the VPN ip addresses. In the three days I've had this software, the VPN only disconected once but it reconected. In the software, it does say "restarting" when the vpn disconnects for 3 seconds. Can the leaks occur during that timeframe? The torrents I've downloaded all were started while I have had the service. The only manual changes I made was I clicked preferences in the client, clicked on the "protocols" tab and manually selected the official wire guard port. I doubt this would be the reason for an ip leak. Do any of you have any ideas what might be causing this?

[Staff 9968]

4 hours ago, WardenGOW said:

Hello, I received 2 copy right infringement notice while vpn was active. The IP in the email is my IP. I have network lock on. In my bit torrent software, Enable UPnP/NAT-PMP is not enabled. I have not made any firewall adjustments while the vpn is active with network lock. I went to ipleak.net to check if my ip was being leaked and everything is under the VPN ip addresses. In the three days I've had this software, the VPN only disconected once but it reconected. In the software, it does say "restarting" when the vpn disconnects for 3 seconds. Can the leaks occur during that timeframe? The torrents I've downloaded all were started while I have had the service. The only manual changes I made was I clicked preferences in the client, clicked on the "protocols" tab and manually selected the official wire guard port. I doubt this would be the reason for an ip leak. Do any of you have any ideas what might be causing this?

Hello!

If Network Lock was active, and firewall rules were not modified, leaks can not happen during a re-connection. The only conceivable way we can imagine (but it is extremely speculative) is that qBittorrent was launched before the VPN connection was up, or before Network Lock was activated, and therefore it announced to trackers and DHT your real IP address for some time, and then the copyright troll did not perform the validation of the claim by attempting a direct connection to your real IP address (yes, there are still trolls that just generate the notice upon harvesting the IP addresses they find on trackers, without validating the claim with a connection to the peer's presumed IP address).

Another highly speculative idea is that you run some "antimalware / Internet protection" tool which might have had overwritten the Network Lock rules without your knowledge.

Were the notices totally correct even about the shared content? What are your Operating System name and version? Do you run Eddie, and if so which version?

Kind regards
 

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

In addition, you should prevent qBittorrent from listening on all interfaces and bind it only to the VPN one. If that interface is down, it won't be able to connect anywhere.
This setting is in Advanced > Network interface.

[WardenGOW 0]

9 hours ago, Staff said:

Were the notices totally correct even about the shared content? What are your Operating System name and version? Do you run Eddie, and if so which version?
 

Yes, the ip address and filename were correct. Windows 10 Pro 22H2. I run Eddie 2.21.8 
 

9 hours ago, Staff said:

Another highly speculative idea is that you run some "antimalware / Internet protection" tool which might have had overwritten the Network Lock rules without your knowledge.

I created a virtual machine for the P2P stuff and I did not make any changes to windows default settings. The AV I have is windows security. no manual changes made to default windows firewall settings. I do recall having launched bittorrent one time without having the vpn connected for maybe 20 seconds until I realised the vpn was not active and now that I am looking closer at the notices, the dates/times listed on both notices are the same day and within 15 seconds of each other so it probably was my negligence. I am sorry for the wasted thread. To verify, the network lock feature is active only if I have the eddie software running correct?

Thank you
 

[Staff 9968]

28 minutes ago, WardenGOW said:

probably was my negligence. I am sorry for the wasted thread. To verify, the network lock feature is active only if I have the eddie software running correct?

Hello!

That's correct. To make any future oversight (i.e. you run qB without running Eddie or other VPN software) harmless please follow the suggestion by OpenSourcerer in the previous message.

Kind regards
 

[WardenGOW 0]

The network bind is something I have never done before. I have found the net.bind_ip section in bittorrent. In the "value" area, do I type out "Eddie" or "AirVPN"(or even the IPv4 exit address)?

Thank you

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

1 hour ago, WardenGOW said:

I have found the net.bind_ip section in bittorrent. In the "value" area, do I type out "Eddie" or "AirVPN"(or even the IPv4 exit address)?

Oh, right, you just generally wrote you were using a BitTorrent software, not qBittorrent in particular. Okay, if it's really the BitTorrent client from BitTorrent Ltd., then it does not support binding to an interface. You must enter the IP address of the VPN interface (the one starting with 10.x.x.x), but I don't recommend you do that because this one changes with generally every connection; you'd be playing whack-a-mole with the mentioned net.bind_ip setting. I seriously recommend qBittorrent going further, and not simply because it's open source.

[WardenGOW 0]

Yes, I use the BitTorrent in the first link you provided. I was always a bit stubborn from moving on from that one. I have heard about qBittorent. I'll give it a go since it does give me that extra bit of saftey if I do accidentally start the torrent software before I start AirVPN. I have followed your suggestion and have bound the network interface to Eddie. Thank you very much for your help AirVPN Staff and OpenSourcerer!

 

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

7 hours ago, WardenGOW said:

I'll give it a go since it does give me that extra bit of saftey if I do accidentally start the torrent software before I start AirVPN

That feature was a godsend when I moved to qB many years ago from uTorrent. It completely obsoleted the need for any kind of "kill switch", especially the one provided by the VPN client I used in my Windows days, which essentially was just an OpenVPN feature wrapped in a fancy GUI. Man oh man, that was almost 11 years ago…