qBittorrent privacy settings

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RandomInhabitant

qBittorrent privacy settings

Post by RandomInhabitant »

I'm running the latest qBittorrent v4.3.1 through PIA VPN using Network:split tunnel Connection:WireGuard protocol for maximum network speeds.

I was horrified to see my public IP show up in the qBittorrent "Peers" listing after I'd painstakingly disabled DHT, PeX, and Local Peer Discovery. I also require encryption and enabled "anonymous mode", then set PIA to only allow qBittorrent to connect via VPN.

How was qBittorrent getting around these settings to display my public non-VPN IP?

After I looked through "Advanced" settings I noticed:
  • QB was binding to "Any Interface" which includes both my VPN and non-VPN interfaces. I looked through the presented list of interfaces and decided "wgpia0" [PIA VPN port] was the -only- interface I wanted QB to use.
  • Then "Optional IP address to bind to" was also set to "All Addresses". I selected a 10.0.0.1 address which is the one provided by PIA VPN, the address for wgpia0.
To figure out what adapter/IP to use I opened a command line window (Windows: "CMD" in the search bar) and typed "ipconfig". This gave me all the ethernet "adapters" for my Windows machine. I knew which ones were local adapters, so VPN had to be whatever was left; wgpai0. I also needed to make sure qBittorrent wasn't binding to any non-VPN IP's, hence 10.0.0.1 only.

In Linux the command would be "ifconfig"

What was confusing to me is PIA under Settings-Network allows me to set qBittorrent as an application to -only- use VPN. Apparently qBittorrent is able to get around this setting by binding to any/all available Ethernet interfaces in a Split Tunnel configuration.

I'll keep an eye on it, but I think these settings are sufficient to prevent my public IP from being exposed.

Summary:
PIA:
  • Privacy:PIA MACE "ON"
  • Network:Split Tunnel
  • Connection:WireGuard protocol
qBittorrent:
  • Settings->BitTorrent:
  • Off-Enable DHT
  • Off-Enable Peer Exchange (PeX)
  • Off-Enable Local Peer Discovery
  • On -Enable anonymous mode

    Settings->Connection:
  • Off-Use UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding from my router
  • On -Use different port on each startup
  • Proxy Server Type (None)

    Settings->Advanced:
  • Network Intrface-wgpia0
  • Optional IP address to bind to-10.0.0.1
If I missed anything, please speak up.
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