How to check if Proton VPN has switched locations?
from westingham@sh.itjust.works to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 14 Mar 02:26
https://sh.itjust.works/post/56767882

I have Proton VPN and qbittorrent running on Windows 10 with qbittorrent bound to Proton interface.

Every now and then Proton will reconnect in the background which means the port changes and the IP address changes.

How can I monitor Proton for these changes and either a.) update qbittorrent or b.) use Pushover to notify me that a change has occurred?

#selfhosted

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upbeatdingo@piefed.world on 14 Mar 03:05 next collapse

Fair warning, my personal machines run linux so I’m not able to test this.

You could use a script like the one listed here to notify you of IP address changes:

https://superuser.com/a/1892075

Edit: I use something like this with a pushover notification to let me know when my external IP address changes

Edit2: or this: https://woodward.digital/public-ip-address-changes-alert-powershell/

Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus on 14 Mar 05:04 next collapse

If you don’t want to bother with this, something a lot of people do is run qBittorrent with Proton in Docker. There are containers that will pipe any changes directly into qBittorrent. The one I use on my media server is from binhex. All self contained and easy to update since it’s Docker.

zer0squar3d@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 14 Mar 16:03 collapse

github.com/qdm12/gluetun supports protonvpn

irmadlad@lemmy.world on 14 Mar 14:58 next collapse

Proton will reconnect in the background which means the port changes and the IP address changes.

That’s weird. What is the reasoning behind that? That would drive me up the wall. A new IP and port would require a new leak test for me. Some VPN slots have a reverse DNS which attaches an identifier to the whole shebang, and in my mind, is unacceptable.

hamFoilHat@lemmy.world on 14 Mar 15:18 collapse

Can I ask, how do you detect that?

[deleted] on 14 Mar 15:37 next collapse
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[deleted] on 14 Mar 15:39 next collapse
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irmadlad@lemmy.world on 14 Mar 15:40 collapse

Without rDNS:

nslookup xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (VPN IP)

** server can’t find xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.in-addr.arpa: NXDOMAIN

With rDNS it might look like this:

nslookup 208.104.203.197

197.203.104.208.in-addr.arpa name = 208-104-203-197.reserved.comporium.net.

ETA: I just pulled 208.104.203.197 out of my firewall. I have beef with them. They hammer me daily from all the way in Gilbert, SC where the fuck that is but I wished they’d stop. I just block their entire CIDR.

Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz on 14 Mar 15:40 next collapse

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
DNS Domain Name Service/System
IP Internet Protocol
VPN Virtual Private Network

3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.

[Thread #164 for this comm, first seen 14th Mar 2026, 15:40] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

sunth1ef@sh.itjust.works on 14 Mar 16:58 collapse

Can confirm that this happens on mobile (installed via F-Droid on GrapheneOS). It will seemingly change countries or profiles mid day or overnight without a restart.

It is super annoying and causes sites I use to send me through all the verifications again / generate new tokens…

I have not witnessed this on Linux via flatpak but will keep an eye out…