this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Fair. I do all of my setup manually these days (networkmanager on linux, openvpn client app on the rare occasion i'm on windows, not a mac guy so no clue there). I implement one using a firewall but that is more complex than most people want. Still, as long as it is done in addition to the qbit network interface bind, then it's not bad to also set a VPN killswitch.
Agreed. This is what I was referencing in the first bullet about network interface
1 - Fair points. TBH, I had my doubts about that initially but have been with them the whole time (before and after kape acquisition). FWIW, I have not seen any change in PIA service quality. In fact, I have seen them add Wireguard support and release all of the code as FOSS (see here). I agree that Kape did some sketchy shit in the past but from what I have seen over the last several years, they are not doing anything sketchy in the VPN/technology sector part of their business (aside from maybe advertising which I consider to be separate). I don't even really think about Kape anymore tbh. If they were ratting me out, I would have had enough dcma notices to start a bonfire with by now.
2 - I had not been aware of that. I haven't used them in a few years. Any sort of data breach definitely sounds bad but since I haven't reviewed the details, I don't want to jump to any conclusions either.
I like Mullvad from a tech and privacy standpoint but IMO they are a bit on the expensive side compared to some of the other options. Nord and PIA you can usually get multiyear deals on periodically and that can drastically lower the overall cost ($80 for a 3yr VPN plan = monthly about 2.22 USD/2.04 euro vs 5 euro/month for mullvad). Not saying price is the be-all-end-all or that Mullvad is unaffordable but it is going to be a consideration for many, especially people that already don't want to shell out for a paid VPN over the free ones. With that in mind, I think there is still value in PIA (and possibly Nord - I haven't reviewed the details of what exactly was breached - e.g. vpn service vs blog server vs etc, what data was exposed, what steps they took to address, etc). There are many other no-logs vpn options besides Nord, PIA, and Mullvad out there, I just don't have any personal experience with them.
I should have also mentioned that I otherwise thought your initial post was good.
At least with Mullvad (and I imagine the other three I mentioned), there is nothing to set. It's already there in the app, and automatically enabled after install. The only thing that can be done is to turn it off.
Understood. I was just providing the specific term ("bind" or "binding"), used by VPN companies & users, for anyone else who wants to search for instructions on properly connecting qBit to their VPN.
It's not my place to fault or criticize you or anyone else for choosing to go with Kape/PIA (or Nord). I just think people should at least know of their past. For me, there is zero chance of me returning to PIA. Someone tells me the girl I'm interested in cheated on their past boyfriend, or tried to somehow spy on or sabotage him? Zero chance I'm getting involved. Too many other good/better options available. My brother has had no issues dating cheaters. To each their own. None of my business why others make the choices they do.
It's not necessarily that they had a data breach, it's how they handled the situation that many people found troubling.
Same with this. I don't fault you for trying to save some money. Everyone has their own situation to deal with, and I've been "there" before. For me, I'm not rich or a boomer, but I'm old enough now and have enough disposable income that I make decisions that work for my privacy and reliability requirements. I see something that cheap now and I ask myself, "why is that so cheap?" It could still be a good product, but I know enough to at least ask the question & research. I also don't pay for long term, multi-year deals anymore (I had about six months remaining on my PIA deal when I "noped" out of being a part of Kape's acquisition), but I still try not to be an idiot and just give away money either. As an example, I buy the Mullvad gift card, with a scratch-off code from Amazon, $29/6mo ($4.83/mo) or $57/12mo ($4.75/mo). No euro exchange rate or transactions fees, etc. My preference is to incentivize my favorite companies to stay in business, providing the service and continual upgrades that I want and expect, like the following:
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/we-have-successfully-completed-our-migration-to-ram-only-vpn-infrastructure
-and-
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/moving-our-encrypted-dns-servers-to-run-in-ram
When people talk about "zero logs," I'm not aware of anything better than having everything run through RAM. Going out to lunch/dinner or watching a movie is roughly $10 to $20/person these days. I'll happily pay a couple extra bucks a month for a VPN with this kind of privacy and continual upgrade in service, or from the other three I mentioned (and I believe Mullvad is still even the least expensive of the four). No criticism from me on your choices though.
I have qBit bound to my VPN (Nord), but it basically stops every few minutes. So I had to stop and use killswitch.
This, I think, is actually an issue with qBit. But maybe it only ever happens to me.
every few minutes is a lot. havent been on nord for a few years but even when i was on them i dont remember getting drops that frequently. i suspect it is likely not an issue with qbit as many others use it without running into drops like that - including myself.
probably an issue with either nord or your isp. if you are on wifi, there are also some routeres with known issues when it comes to dropping wifi signal - but there's too many different models and firmware versions to really guess this accurately without detailed info (and sometimes it only happens in specific versions of firmware on specific routers).
i get occasional drops on PIA but its usually after running for something like 3-7 days straight. i'm not using the official pia client app but instead download manual ovpn file configurations from pia and import them into generic client. under windows, you need the openvpn free community client for this. under linux, you can import them into networkmanager. iirc, nord has manual ovpn files too but they make you select a specific server and download 1 config file at a time.
alternately, if you setup wireguard that might also work better but haven't tested myself
I used Nord proxies when I still used uTorrent, never had issues. I'm definitely hardwired, and my isp is shit, don't get me wrong, but the only change I can see is qBit and proxies. I tried every server they had available, and the issue just stops when I don't use their proxies. Maybe I should try proxies from some other service, but I'm not really in a place to shop around... and I don't know that free vpn services have proxies that you can try.
I also say "stops every few minutes", I should clarify, it stops and doesn't resume. I have to close qbit and reopen.
I don't know enough about ovpn or wireguard to know how that would help me... Is that not a VPN/tunneling that you have to have both sides to use? So I would go to a server that has another VPN running on anyways?
OpenVPN and Wireguard are different protocols that VPN providers can use. Technically, there are also groups and client apps of the same name for both too. I think there are other protocols too (pretty sure there's one called IPsec and maybe some others) but OpenVPN and Wireguard are 2 of the most common. Wireguard is newer and generally is regarded as faster than OpenVPN protocol but there are some privacy issues with it if using the unmodified version. Some VPN companies use a modified version of WG that address those issues (Nord and PIA). But since customers can't inspect the server configs, I would definitely recommend only using VPN companies that have undergone a third party audit to confirm that they keep no logs and have a server configuration without privacy issues (off my head: PIA, Nord, Mullvad, expressvpn, surfshark, cyberghost).
Yes, if your VPN provider doesn't have servers configured with Wireguard, then you can't use it. And even if they do, it probably won't be all the servers so you need to choose one with it. So if say your provider was Nord. Nord calls their modified WG as "NordLynx".
If you wanted to connect to Nord's WG (aka NordLynx) servers, AFAIK you have to use the official Nord client app. Some providers might release a WG config file that you could use to manually set it up but last time I checked Nord only offers manual config files for OpenVPN (here's an old reddit thread basically saying the same thing). This is annoying if you are trying to have a setup where you can switch between multiple providers and protocols easily (like me) or in places where you can't install client software (like routers) but probably not a big deal to most users connecting from a computer/tablet/phone/etc.
For PIA, it is similar although they don't rename their Wireguard as something else. But again, they don't provide manual WG configs and you have to use their official app to use it. However, they do have some github repos and more technical users can run some scripts to generate temporary manual configs (my understanding is that unlike the OpenVPN manual configs, these will eventually expire and you will need to rerun the scripts again at some later time).
Not sure. Hard to debug without concrete details and I'm probably not the best for that anyway. Could be proxies; I connect to vpn servers but not via socks proxies so not sure how those are different speed wise.
If not that, could be qbit settings or version (several years ago some various builds of qbit could be hit or miss but I thought that was more or less done with nowadays). If you are interested in working it out, my recommendation would be to take some screenshots of qbit settings. Then create a post asking about improving qbit speeds and also list a) who the vpn provider is - nord or whatever you use now, b) how you are connecting - nord app or proxy url etc, c) if you are testing with same torrent in each, then what kind of approx numbers you are seeing in qbit and what you expect based on network test. That would probaby be enough info for folks to help you get it sorted and would be a good resource for anybody else having similar troubles.