How to bind your torrent client to qbittorrent to prevent IP leaking
It's simple and easy, and keeps big brother from watching
If you torrent using qbittorrent, and you happen to be downloading content that can be….questionable in the eyes of the copyright monster, then a VPN is a must.
Plenty of people have received letters in the mail from their ISP citing DMCA, copyright or cease and desists for torrenting pirated movies, games, software and music.
This doesn’t have to be the case though, as most if not all of these instances were caused by lack of opsec, most commonly not using a VPN to hide their traffic.
Step One: Get a VPN!
It sounds obvious, but really there are so many VPN’s out there that choosing can be daunting. However, do your research, estimate your budget and you’ll be fine.
My personal VPN of choice is Mullvad. I used to use Proton and it’s free tier for a while, but since I discovered Mullvad I haven’t looked back. Mullvad does not require any personal details to sign up, rather it utilises a random unique User ID, which is tied to your account. You forget this number, your account is gone.
This also means no emails or passwords to enter. Just put your account number in and your on. Don’t share this number with anyone!
Mullvad offers a very cheap price of 5 Euros a month, so this is very affordable.
Step Two: Install the Mullvad/VPN client (if applicable)
Installing the Mullvad client is as easy as any other software installation on Windows or MacOS. Just follow the prompts.
Then, when it is installed, click on the Mullvad application and log in with your customer number.
You should not have to do any more configuration, just select “Secure Connection” and that’s it.
This process should be similar with other VPN’s such as ProtonVPN.
Step Three: Bind the VPN client to qbittorrent
In Qbittorrent’s main page, click on the blue cog icon in the top left bar. Then navigate down to Advanced, and where you see Network Interface, click the menu to the right of that.
If you are using Mullvad, the interface you will want will be simply called “Mullvad” Click on this, then Apply, then OK, and close qbittorrent completely. Restart the application, and you should now be connected to a secure VPN connection through your torrent client.
This way, if your VPN disconnects or you accidentally close the application, the torrent will pause until you can reconnect.