2.000€ fine for torrenting two movies - while using Mullvad VPN

VPN
1

throwaway for obvious reasons.

just a quick notice for anyone using Mullvad VPN. I got some nice letters from lawyers in Germany. They got my name, IP address and the movies - everything 100% correct.

I’m also 100% certain that I was using the VPN while torrenting via qBittorrent.

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2.000€ fine, I’m looking into legal advice now.

2

It’s impossible that they found your details through Mullvad, simply due to the fact that Mullvad keeps no logs and there’s no reports of them cooperating with any officials in the past.

How are you 100% certain you were using the vpn while torrenting? Did you set the network interface to Mullvad?

3

I think people are a bit harsh with you. Essentially you got caught because something leaked - the authorities, even if they have access to Mulvad (and AFAIK they do not), would not use it to fine people 2k euros - they’re after the big fish. Giving the impression of safety is their job actually, so the likelihood is, that something leaked, that is all.
As so many said, you have to bind the interfaces for torrenting, have the killswitch on etc. ONE bad reboot, ONE mistake and you’re done. That’s why it’s far better (and I don’t say this to make you feel bad, but for anyone in general) to do the two-box setup where you handle all VPNing via a firewall you control on one machine (there are some prebuilt setups you can get) and leave everything normal on the daily usage machine. Much safer this way as you can simply have the firewall drop all packets that won’t be VPNed for reason x, y or z.

4

You obviously didn’t use vpn for torrenting then.

5

You should be using a docker container VM on a separate machine dedicated for this stuff. I would never connect my actual personal machine for torrenting

6

It’s unfortunate, but you did not have your qBittorrent Advanced Settings correct. So, while Mullvad may have been enabled at the time, you may have been disconnected from the VPN (this can happen with any VPN, it’s not Mullvad’s fault).

VPNs alone are inherently unsafe without taking other precautions, because PCs are designed to seamlessly fallback to an alternate available network connection if the current network drops. You could lose your VPN privacy without realizing it. You might have had a temporary pop-up when Mullvad initially disconnected, and that’s it.

To provide better protection, you should have taken the following steps (I’ll assume you are running Windows):

  • In the Windows Taskbar Overflow options, enable the Mullvad icon. This will make sure that the Mullvad status is always shown in your taskbar, and you will see it turn red when you are not actively on the VPN
  • In qBittorrent, go to the Advanced Options, select Network Interface = Mullvad. This forces qBittorrent to stay on the Mullvad connection, even if the VPN connection drops (which means that all torrent traffic stops in both directions when the VPN drops).
  • You probably should use a dedicated browser for all your VPN searching. I use Firefox, and I set up its network connection to use the Mullvad SOCKS5 proxy. Similar to the above qBittorrent setting, if the VPN drops, all traffic to/from Firefox is immediately terminated.
  • Another option is to enable Mullvad’s VPN killswitch, though that is a sledgehammer solution to the problem.
7

That sucks. What OS? Official Mullvad app, or WireGuard/OpenVPN app? Did you set the qBT interface settings to (eg) utun0 with the tunnel IP, or did you just leave it set to automatic? Killswitch?

8

I have always used a seedbox for this reason. I am not confident that I can prevent any kind of info leaking with 100% certainty.

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I feel you OP. Who is your ISP?

9

If the letters listed your ISP IP address or other non-VPN address, then you had something misconfigured. Simple as that.

10

Check this website without the VPN active and see if shows what you downloaded. If it does then the VPN was not active at the time. Torrent downloads and distributions for IP 144.91.105.199

11

https://ipmagnet.services.cbcdn.com/ lets you check torrent IP address leaks.

12

Betting op is just fearmongering seeing as it’s impossible if they did everything right.

13

I was not aware BitTorrent clients could circumvent Mullvad. Thanks for the heads-up!

(Is this the case for Transmission too, and in that case, how to secure it?)

Is there any way of seeing if traffic “leaks beside” the tunnel?

14

wie ist es ausgegangen? Musstest du bezahlen?

15

You didn’t set it up right.

16

Newly created account just to tell about this?

17

Thats why I always block also telemetry on router level. Sometimes even you share, if you’re using win10 machine, the key you activated is also sending data. Your product ID is shared with ISP. Even if you’re using qbit and bind the connection, the telemetry can and I say can leak data to your ISP. If you’re gonna torrenting, use an pfsense router or similar functions that can block data that Microsoft can send. And microsoft can send it futher to ISP and ISP send the data futher to an law firm.

18

opsec 101 dont go to google/facebook from the same ip you are doing bad stuff from at the same time

19

Sounds to me like you didn’t check your UpSec.

Hope it all works out in the end

20

If you enabled Mullvad and did everything correctly, that sucks I suppose. Those letters can usually be ignored though, lets hope for the best I suppose