Ultimately, I only want to use Proton VPN for torrenting and seeding, while not using Proton VPN for browsing the internet, using Steam and Discord (essentially everything else).
I’m currently using Proton VPN for torrenting, but sadly it doesn’t support using a kill switch if I’m already using split tunneling. I read that NordVPN can use both simultaneously, but I’m not sure if this is actually true. Should I switch VPN so that I can use split tunneling and a kill switch together?
Essentially, I only want to use the VPN for torrenting, and it would be nice to be able to use a kill switch for the torrent if it loses connection.
Thank you.
Best thing to do in a situation like this is to have a bake off. Just pay the smallest amount of money you can to test out other services till you can form your own opinion.
I would test mullvad. It does split tunneling with a kill switch at the same time, it also allows you to do local networking without split tunneling. It doesn’t do any logging and you can pay in cash. I use it to seed and in my torrent app (qbittorrent) I set it to only connect to internet through my VPN so even if the kill switch somehow failed, the moment I’m no longer on the VPN my torrents stop no matter if I’m leeching or seeding.
For further research, I suggest the piracy megathread
can’t you just force torrent program to use vpn as a only network connection
Honestly, I’m not really sure - I am using Proton VPN and qbittorrent.
Turn the Proton killswitch off and use split tunneling, then bind your torrent client to the VPN. This is more reliable than a built-in killswitch.
Or if you’re on Linux, spin up one of Binhex’s bittorrent+vpn containers. Since you’re using Proton, the containers from Binhex will automagically make sure your torrent client is using the random open port Proton picks each time you connect.
Other people have suggested binding the client to the vpn interface. In rtorrent this is very easy. It may be easy in other clients.
Use Linux & the Android app Rethink while it’s still being funded by Mozilla (you never know). Easily configure your devices to split apps among different VPNs. If you know how to look around you can find public proxies. 😉 I would really not recommend trusting Proton, but I know Mullvad (also untrustworthy & visibly confined to west-friendly datacenters) makes it super easy by snagging all the files from the website, Proton might have something similar
The only real constraint here is VPN port forwarding. You would need a VPN provider that supports that in order to hit DHT swarms. So, just make sure the provider has that.
As for kill switching, run the VPN and torrent client through docker. There is probably already a docker image out there that does that depending on what provider you go with. Essentially what you’d be doing is sandboxing your torrent client and then only passing in the VPN interface via docker network to that client. If the VPN tunnel goes down there is no other egress point off the network segment and zero chance for traffic using a different interface.
