Just realized my VPN was leaking my DNS requests for 6 months

I ran that leak test tool from that security blog and found my home IP in the results even though I was connected to a server in Sweden, so how do you actually check if your VPN is working right?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jessica1mo ago

Heard someone on a podcast say to check DNS with a simple command line tool.

miab871mo ago

lol I had the exact same panic moment when I found my real IP in a leak test once, felt like such a dummy. @the_jessica is right about checking DNS with a simple command, you can run nslookup on Windows or dig on Linux/Mac to see what server your queries are actually hitting. But honestly the easiest way is to just visit a site like ipleak.net or dnsleaktest.com while connected to your VPN - they show you both your visible IP and the DNS servers being used. If you see your home ISP's DNS servers in there instead of your VPN provider's, then yeah, you got a leak happening. What fixed it for me was switching to a VPN that has its own DNS servers built in and turning off any IPv6 in my network settings since a lot of leaks come from that. Sucks to find out after so long but at least now you know how to catch it lol.