I’m brand new to torrenting and was looking to pirate some audiobooks off AudiobookBay. I followed the Wispy Docs Torrent Client Guide on VPN Binding Mullvad VPN with qBittorrent. (I know Mullvad isn’t ideal but I want to use up my pre-existing subscription.)
My concern is that in Mullvad’s BitTorrent guide (no longer maintained) they suggest the following additional changes:
- Enable anonymous mode.
- Disable DHT
- Disable PeX
- Disable Local peer discovery
- Select TCP as Peer connection protocol
I tried searching on Reddit if I should follow any of these settings changes but people were very unclear. Some said they’re outdated because “private trackers yada yada” (I’m new so am unfamiliar with the reasoning) but I’m not sure if that applies to my situation.
I already tested with torrent IP checkers and the binding seems to have worked. What else (if anything) should I be doing?
Why are others in this thread saying DHT and PEX can leak your home IP? I don’t understand that. I don’t think I’ve ever disabled these settings.
DHT and tackers leaks you IP, on purpose. The goal is to establish connections between peers, the only way to do that is to use IP adresses. DHT and trackers act like a DNS, giving list of IPs associated to a torrent hash.
Now if you use a VPN, well configured, you’ll only expose your VPN output node IP.
As in if you have your VPN binded to your client?
Personally I keep whatever VM I’m torrenting from running through a separate router that forces it through the VPN. Whether that be my pfsense box or a qube on qubes os.