Warnings from ISP; what am I doing wrong?

[John_the_Savage1 0]

So lately I've been gettings several content warnings from my ISP, even though I've always turned my vpn on before starting up any torrenting client. I even have Torguard set up to close the torrenting client on shutdown, although I'll typically close the torrent client before disconnecting the vpn. What could I be doing wrong? My go-to torrent client is qbittorrent, if it makes any difference.

[Dom1no 9]

When using a VPN for torrenting it needs to be configured securely by setting everything up right, 

Most people accidentally use their ISP DNS which leads to your real IP leaking and getting Notices. You can change your DNS in either your Router* or your wifi/Ethernet Adapter* or in the Torguard Client* >>> I personally change DNS settings in all 3 spots to ensure No leaks.

Inside the Torguard client in the settings there are also things to setup which if not setup properly can lead to leaks* here is a picture of mine for an example.

Like you mentioned above you need to make sure the VPN is running before* you launch your torrent client but you mentioned above you set yours up to close your client upon disconnecting from the vpn which is not the best choice in my opinion ,, I personally make sure torrents are stopped/paused then i close the torrent client.... then after waiting a few seconds for peers to disconnect in the torrent client you can disconnect from the VPN.

You may also wana consider setting up socks5 inside your torrent client for a second layer of defense. I use socks5 in the torrent client and run VPN "wireguard" on my desktop to ensure no leaks. Make sure if you setup socks5 to set it up properly otherwise it will leak your ip, google has 100's of guides.

Keep in mind if you need any help you can open a support ticket and support are usually pretty fast to respond and help


 

[Cytane89 2]

Not to thread jack(since this is relevant to the manner at hand), just ensuring that using a site like dnsleaktest and getting a result like this is enough to confirm that there are no DNS leaks?

 

[Dom1no 9]

The test results from your picture indicate no leaks , i guess it all depends how thorough you want to be. By changing the DNS in your Adapter or Router or both can obviously increase security by adding a fallback*. It ensures that if something glitches or whatever that no leaks will happen due to having it set in different spots.

It all comes down to how important your privacy/security is to you and if its important then it is good to have fallbacks be it DNS setup on router/Adapter or socks5 inside your torrent client or all of the above setting more things up properly increases security and lessens the chance of something going wrong. I personally choose to do All of the above that way i can be 100% secure.

[Cytane89 2]

22 minutes ago, Dom1no said:

The test results from your picture indicate no leaks , i guess it all depends how thorough you want to be. By changing the DNS in your Adapter or Router or both can obviously increase security by adding a fallback*. It ensures that if something glitches or whatever that no leaks will happen due to having it set in different spots.

It all comes down to how important your privacy/security is to you and if its important then it is good to have fallbacks be it DNS setup on router/Adapter or socks5 inside your torrent client or all of the above setting more things up properly increases security and lessens the chance of something going wrong. I personally choose to do All of the above that way i can be 100% secure.

Good to know, thanks for the info. Does the option in TG "Block outside DNS" handle this as well? So if there somehow is a potential leak, TG prevents the use of other DNS servers so network connectivity would effectively stall for that moment? Also, do you recommend a specific DNS server to choose in TG? I've always had it set to "Pushed DNS" but wondered if I'd be better off with Adblocking.

[Dom1no 9]

There is a thread here where Torguard support touches on the subject a little >>> 

What specifically* "Block outside DNS" does or does not do is unknown because they don't really post much information on "specific details* so its one of those things you likely have to open a support ticket and ask them if you want to know more. I have it enabled as you can see in my picture above and have used it this way for years without issues.

Since not much information on technical stuff is posted if i had to guess... i would say that setting likely limits DNS requests from leaking outside of the DNS settings you have set within the Torguard Application , so it would essentially limit you to the DNS which is set within the Application to secure from leaks. I still however go the step further and properly set things up in Adapter/Router/Socks5 just to give myself peace of mind. I would suggest if you wana know specifics on settings to open a support ticket and ask.

like there is a new  "QML GUI available." The new GUI can be enabled from the Settings. new settings and stuff get released but no information gets posted about what the setting does or why it is used or any specifics so the only way to know is to open a support ticket and ask.

[Cytane89 2]

Yea, you're right. Would probably have to go the support ticket route for more information. Thanks again for the info/advice.

[John_the_Savage1 0]

On 2/23/2021 at 6:48 PM, Dom1no said:

When using a VPN for torrenting it needs to be configured securely by setting everything up right, 

Most people accidentally use their ISP DNS which leads to your real IP leaking and getting Notices. You can change your DNS in either your Router* or your wifi/Ethernet Adapter* or in the Torguard Client* >>> I personally change DNS settings in all 3 spots to ensure No leaks.

Inside the Torguard client in the settings there are also things to setup which if not setup properly can lead to leaks* here is a picture of mine for an example.

Like you mentioned above you need to make sure the VPN is running before* you launch your torrent client but you mentioned above you set yours up to close your client upon disconnecting from the vpn which is not the best choice in my opinion ,, I personally make sure torrents are stopped/paused then i close the torrent client.... then after waiting a few seconds for peers to disconnect in the torrent client you can disconnect from the VPN.

You may also wana consider setting up socks5 inside your torrent client for a second layer of defense. I use socks5 in the torrent client and run VPN "wireguard" on my desktop to ensure no leaks. Make sure if you setup socks5 to set it up properly otherwise it will leak your ip, google has 100's of guides.

Keep in mind if you need any help you can open a support ticket and support are usually pretty fast to respond and help

 

By the socks5, are you talking about the torguard proxy that you have to subscribe to seperately? Also, I know that it's better to shut down the torrent client before disconnecting from the VPN; I just have the app kill set up in case anything goes wrong with the torguard program itself, like if I was forced to kill it from Task Manager or something.

[Dom1no 9]

Socks5 is included with the VPN packages you can view them on the website in your control panel.

if you got notices then something is setup wrong so you will need to go over some of the things mentioned above to fix the leak first, then you can look into setting up socks5 in your client to add a 2nd layer of anonymity which insures a secure connection having multiple layers. 

I will note though socks5 is not mandatory i use it combined with the Desktop App using Wiregaurd just as my personal preference. If you fix your leak you may not necessarily need socks5 if you do not wish to use it. I would never rely on socks5 by itself without the Desktop VPN Application running as well but combining them works good.

Changing DNS in router is also a drastic step from some people so that is also optional but i would for sure set it to something secure via the Wifi/Ethernet Adapter to Ensure no leaks, inside the torguard client there is an option to do this "set system DNS" which i would recommend doing.

There are 4 or 5 decent sites you can use to check for torrent/dns/ip leaks I'd recommend going over your settings and running tests of all diff kinds on the sites available via google there are alot i personally run them ALL! when doing testing. Torguard has all of the tests available as well but it's good to try others too when testing.

If you run into any issues or have any questions i would recommend sending them a ticket.