A fully VPN’ed family member got hit with an automated copyright strike and when looking into how it happened I found out that using the default qBittorrent config with a killswitch-enabled ProtonVPN meant that the home IP address was being leaked. I verified it through a few tools, including ipleak(dot)net’s fake magnet link feature which showed both the VPN and home IPs when connected. I’m at best a tinkerer so I’m not sure if this is a Proton-exclusive problem at all, or if the killswitch useage is even relevant, but that’s what they were using and figured this all might be worth mentioning since it was certainly a shock to us and not something we’ve seen brought up before.
The solution was to change which network interface qBittorrent was set to use via “Tools > Preferences > Advanced > Network interface”. Which one to pick will depend on the protocol you’re using in Proton’s client, but unless you’re confident in what you’re doing I’d recommend testing each with the ipleak(dot)net (or similar) torrent tool until you’re only seeing the VPN IP show up.
Hope this is useful! (and not common knowledge that we were just wildly ignorant of)
I outlined some differences that could make it worth it over just interface binding for some. Another is that it makes it impossible to accidentally have another application exit through the tunnel, leaking your identity, like a browser logged into gmail.com. You have to explicitly set the container as proxy in the browser for that to become possible. It also allows using a separate VPN connection, provider or region for the torrent client, while the desktop user is free to use a different VPN connection or none.
Would this enable me to run qBit in the docker container with the VPN, while leaving the computer without VPN for running a server?
Opening ports with a VPN isn’t friendly.
Yes. It’s what I do. In fact some of the servers I’m running use my own VPN which allows me to securely connect to them.