What Are VPN Leaks, and How Do You Fix Them
A VPN can leak several pieces of information about you that can be used to expose your real identity, including:
How to Find Out If a VPN is Leaking Data
VPNs are among the best privacy tools on the market. They create a safe environment for you to connect to the Internet and engage in activities such as reading emails, browsing websites, playing online games, and streaming media privately.
The promise of anonymity is the very foundation of services like VPNs. From a privacy standpoint, anonymity should be treated as a superlative. In other words, nobody should be able to figure out the identity of someone using an anonymity service.
However, in reality, most VPN services deal in various degrees of privacy. Since VPNs route your entire connection through a proprietary server network, providers can see your data.
Trustworthy VPNs refrain from shady practices such as monitoring or logging your data, making it impossible to link your online activity with your real identity. Unfortunately, not even dependable VPN services are exempt from technical issues or cybernetic attacks that could lead to inadvertent data leaks.
Major service providers often figure out if there’s been a breach and take all necessary steps to keep things under control and mitigate damage. However, if you want to be extra cautious, you can perform a series of tests to assess if your VPN connection is stable and airtight.
VPN leaks explained
Most of the time, VPN leaks go unnoticed without jeopardizing the security and privacy of the end-user. However, if the user is an organization or a target of interest for hackers, even a minor slip-up could expose their real identity to malicious actors.
A VPN can leak several pieces of information about you that can be used to expose your real identity, including:
Domain Name System (DNS) is a technology used to translate human-readable domain names into machine-readable IP addresses. Usually, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) handles your DNS requests.
This implies that your ISP can keep tabs on your online activity and see every website and service you access. VPN providers with private DNS servers redirect your DNS queries and prevent your ISP from monitoring these requests.
However, if your VPN leaks DNS data, your connection will default the queries back to your ISP, which will be able to see your requests, even though the rest of your connection is private.
A renowned feature of VPN is IP spoofing, cloaking or hiding. VPNs change your IP address and assign you the same address as the server you’re connected to. An IP leak exposes your real IP address to the Internet, rendering one of the VPN’s core functionalities useless. Keeping your IP address hidden is crucial if you’re worried about being monitored, tracked or restricted from various online services.
Although GPS geolocation can be easily disabled on most systems, certain entities can still extract your approximate geographical location from your IP address. This emphasizes the importance of using a service that doesn’t leak your IP address.
Last but not least, WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) leaks can expose a series of details about your true identity. However, WebRTC leaks are not a VPN-related issue but a browser-based situation. Simply disabling WebRTC in your browser should be enough to prevent these leaks, but you could also opt for a VPN service with complete WebRTC leak protection.
Testing your VPN for data leaks
There are various ways to assess if your VPN connection is airtight or if it leaks data. If you’re a seasoned user, you could use advanced network tools such as packet analyzer tool Wireshark to test your VPN tunnel.
You can find several open-source network analyzer tools that allow you to probe your connection and spot potential leaks in a controlled environment before becoming loyal to a VPN provider.
User-friendly services such as BrowserLeaks can give similar results without too much effort. These services are usually browser-based and host a battery of tests to analyze your connection, helping you identify any leaks and take measures promptly.
Note that even specialized leak detection tools sometimes generate false-positive results, especially browser-based ones. If you’re using such a service and notice DNS, IP or WebRTC leaks, make sure to clear your browser’s cache and cookies and attempt the test again.
Picking the right VPN provider
Trustworthy VPN services such as Bitdefender VPN don’t leak anything outside their private tunnel, whether it’s your IP address, DNS requests, geolocation or WebRTC. When you choose a VPN provider for the long run, do not compromise, as even minor leaks could expose your true identity online.
What Are VPN Leaks, and How Do You Fix Them?
JP Jones is our CTO. He has over 25 years of software engineering and networking experience, and oversees all technical aspects of our VPN testing process.
VPN leaks can expose your IP address, DNS requests, and browsing activity to your ISP and anyone monitoring your internet connection. Unless you know how to check for VPN leaks, you may never realize they’re happening. In this article, we explain the different types of VPN leaks and exactly how to fix them.
Many VPN services that claim to protect your privacy are in fact leaking your IP address, DNS requests, and location without you even knowing it.
Your VPN connection may seem safe: there are no notifications or errors, your VPN service has a strict no-logging policy, and it’s headquartered in a privacy-friendly jurisdiction.
However, it’s still possible that your internet service provider (ISP), government authorities, and the websites you visit can see your IP address and browsing activity.
Our own investigation into free VPNs revealed that 25% of the most popular free Android VPN apps failed to protect users due to DNS and other leaks.
So how do you know if your VPN is leaking, and which VPNs can you actually trust to protect your data?
In this guide, we’ll explain the different types of VPN leaks, how to check for them, and how to fix them.
The easiest way to test for data leaks is to use our VPN leak testing tool. If you’ve tested your VPN and found IP, DNS, or WebRTC leaks, you can follow the instructions in this guide to fix them.
If you’re consistently experiencing data leaks with your current VPN provider, you should also consider subscribing to a better VPN service.
Our top recommendation for 2023 is ExpressVPN, which has never failed a leak test in over five years of testing.
What’s In This Guide
- What Are VPN Leaks?
- Which VPN Services Leak Data?
- How to Fix VPN Leaks (IP, DNS, WebRTC, and More)
- How to Fix IP Address Leaks
- How to Fix DNS Leaks
- How to Fix WebRTC Leaks
- How to Fix HTML5 Geolocation Leaks
- How to Disable Flash
- How to Fix a Data Center IP
- How to Fix Torrent IP Leaks (TCP & UDP)
- How to Fix Torrent DNS Leaks
- Preventing VPN Leaks
What’s In This Guide
- What Are VPN Leaks?
- Which VPN Services Leak Data?
- How to Fix VPN Leaks (IP, DNS, WebRTC, and More)
- How to Fix IP Address Leaks
- How to Fix DNS Leaks
- How to Fix WebRTC Leaks
- How to Fix HTML5 Geolocation Leaks
- How to Disable Flash
- How to Fix a Data Center IP
- How to Fix Torrent IP Leaks (TCP & UDP)
- How to Fix Torrent DNS Leaks
- Preventing VPN Leaks
What Are VPN Leaks?
A ‘VPN leak’ refers to a security flaw that allows your IP address, DNS requests, or other identifying information to be revealed to any third party monitoring your internet connection.
Four different types of VPN leaks.
VPN software is primarily designed to hide your public IP address and encrypt your web traffic by rerouting it through a secure tunnel to a remote server. When your VPN leaks, some or all of this sensitive information passes outside of the encrypted tunnel.
If your real IP address or DNS requests are leaking, your ISP can still see your browsing activity and any websites you visit can see your real IP address. Your privacy is not protected, and your identity is exposed, making the VPN service useless.
To find out if your VPN is working as it should, you can run your own test at home using our VPN and torrent IP leak testing tool. It requires very little technical knowledge and takes just a matter of minutes.
You can also conduct a basic manual test for IP leaks using our What Is My IP checker tool. Simply check your IP address before and after connecting to a VPN server – if your IP address doesn’t change, your VPN isn’t working.
Here is a summary of the three main types of VPN leak:
IP Address Leaks
IP address leaks occur when your VPN service fails to mask your public IP address with one of its own. This is a significant privacy risk as any websites you visit will be able to see your real identity and geographic location.
If your IP address is leaking, your VPN is simply not doing its job. Your online privacy is not protected, and streaming services will be able to detect your true location.
IPv4 leaks are rare, but IPv6 leaks are quite common – especially amongst low-quality VPN services. Only VPNs specifically developed to reroute or block IPv6 traffic will offset this problem.
Premium VPNs should include a kill switch to protect your IP address in the event of a connection loss. However, our VPN kill switch testing revealed that many top services still leak your IP address if you change VPN servers while connected.
DNS leaks
DNS leaks occur when your DNS requests are revealed to your ISP’s DNS servers even when connected to a VPN server.
DNS requests are essentially records of the websites you visit when browsing the internet. Normally, this process is carried out by your ISP’s DNS servers, which often log the requests along with your IP address.
A VPN is supposed to encrypt your DNS queries and route them to its own private DNS servers. This prevents your ISP from monitoring the websites you visit. If your VPN fails to reroute your DNS requests and routes them to your ISP’s default DNS servers instead, it’s called a DNS leak.
To find out which servers your device is using, you can test your DNS servers using our tool.
WebRTC leaks
WebRTC is a browser-based technology that allows audio and video communications to work inside web pages. It’s enabled by default in popular browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.
Websites can use your browser’s WebRTC functionality to discover your true IP address, even when you’re using a VPN. If this happens and your true IP address is not blocked by your VPN, it’s known as a WebRTC leak.
Which VPN Services Leak Data?
We’ve reviewed over 65 VPNs and tested every individual service for IP, DNS, and WebRTC leaks.
Our testing revealed that some of the most-downloaded VPNs on the Apple and Google app stores leak some kind of user data through DNS or WebRTC. In the table below, you can see some of the most popular culprits.
For an in-depth analysis of over 150 free Android VPNs and their security tests, read our Free VPN Risk Index.