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Add new FAQ: "Does WebTorrent leak your IP address?" #908

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Add new FAQ: "Does WebTorrent leak your IP address?"

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feross committed Sep 13, 2016
commit e73f18d85fff50922d8faa98007e96a501d9361c
@@ -351,6 +351,35 @@ would be around 10-20 seconds behind the live stream.
This approach can definitely be improved, though! Why not give that a shot yourself
and share the code?

## Does WebTorrent leak your IP address when using a VPN? I heard that WebRTC leaks your IP address.

No.

WebRTC data channels do not allow a website to discover your public IP address when
there is a VPN in use. The WebRTC discovery process will just find your VPN's IP
address and the local network IP address.

Local IP addresses (e.g. 10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x) can potentially be used to
"fingerprint" your browser and identify across different sites that you visit,
like a third-party tracking cookie. However, this is a separate issue than exposing
your real public IP address, and it's worth noting that the browser already
provides hundreds of vectors for fingerprinting you
(e.g. your installed fonts, screen resolution, browser window size, OS version,
language, etc.).

If you have a VPN enabled, then WebRTC data channels will not connect to peers
using your true public IP address, nor will it be reveled to the JavaScript running
on the webpage.

At one point in time, WebRTC did have an issue where it would allow a website
to discover your true public IP address, but this was fixed a long time ago. This
unfortunate misinformation keeps bouncing around the internet.

There's now a spec that defines exactly which IP addresses are exposed with WebRTC.
If you're interested in further reading, you can read the
[IP handling spec](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-rtcweb-ip-handling-01)
for yourself.

# Troubleshooting

## Why does browser downloading not work? I see no peers!
ProTip! Use n and p to navigate between commits in a pull request.
You can’t perform that action at this time.