I have been using PIA for over 5 years and have Proxy5 configured for my downloads on my BitTor##nt client. Till yesterday there were no issues but this morning, I got an email from my ISP for “DMCA Copyright Complaint Notice ID”
My PIA subscription is good till the end of 2025. Did anything change on PIA side? How did the ISP get to know I was downloading something?
My assumption was if I am using Proxy5 and downloading then my ISP gets a different IP address.
A proxy is not a VPN.
Bind your download client to your tunnel
This check will show you real IP/DNS connection:
Enable the VPN kill switch in PIA.
It happened to me not long ago because PIA disconnected for some unknown reason but the torrent kept downloading and that’s when I got my letter.
If I had the kill switch enabled as soon as PIA disconnected the torrent would stop dead in its tracks.
100% that is what happened to you.
Forget socks proxy, forget kill switch.
The only 100% guaranteed way to make sure all traffic is hidden from your ISP is run a VPN connection and bind your client to the VPN IP / adapter.
Why does anyone use socks5 for torrents anymore, the VPN is all you need
use the tunnel option in pia or configure torrentclient to directly use pia. Both options will behave as a kill switch
My raspberry pi runs a torrent client in a special network namespace which is behind pia vpn. The vpn is started as a systemd service and it auto starts my torrent client as a systemd service. If the vpn service drops, it takes the torrent client down with it. The rest of my pi operates outside the vpn. Only PIA know what is going on inside the vpn as it is encrypted. ISP will never know.
i’m confused- were you not using your PIA VPN? If so, then why not bind your bittorrent app to the VPN? If you leak your IP address, especially torrent, that’s an issue.
I have PIA VPN programmed in the router itself. I guess I am lucky and should start to rethink my strategy?
Doesn’t that only change your IP? It doesn’t encrypt your traffic.
This is the only way.
Except… This doesn’t mean the torrent client is using the VPN tunnel…
That happened to me when we had a power blip.
I think ISP purposely tries to dip your internet to get it to bump the PIA into no longer hiding your VPN, either by accident or restarting the app to get it working. I’ve use it for many years now, always have the kill switch on, zero problems
Crazy how so many people just ignore the megathread.
This is the only way to go. 100%
That what it will do…the IP address will be of PIA but contents can be seen. It was working fine until yesterday
what he said… this is the only way… in short, download the PIA app, connect either OpenVPN or Wireguard BIND YOUR VPN… and then restart your torrent client… and lastly, test your connection with ipleak.