If I turn on a VPN to obscure my IP address and start downloading totally legal stuff through a torrent software, and then:
Can those logins/times, etc. from browsing be used to link ME to that obscured IP address? Is there any danger?
Short answer is yes, they could be, but they won’t be.
If you torrent popular pirated content, a media company may be in the seeder pool grabbing IPs of people. Then they try to send notices to ISPs to find, “hey, who was using this IP at this time stamp.” With a VPN, that IP is not tied to you, so the media co is empty handed.
If you also simultaneously logged into websites such as Facebook or a bank, you would create records in their systems including your vpn IP and the timestamp.
Theoretically, someone with access to Facebook/Bank/etc records at the time, as well as the torrenting evidence could link your identity to the torrent. However, this is prohibitively expensive to do in a civil case. They would likely need a team of lawyers, subpoena, etc for every single pirate out there. It’s not worth it for them, they go for the low hanging fruit of people not using VPNs.
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However, if you were torrenting something legitimately illegal that would draw an actual criminal investigation, they could absolutely de-anonymize you this way.
So theoretically possible, but most likely you aren’t at risk for bringing that kind of attention on yourself.
Sure, it’s likely they could but no one who cares about your torrenting has access to all that information.
Technically possible. Better use vpn only for torrent client.
No, that’s exactly what a VPN is for. Your bank’s website might have a problem with you using one though.
ANSWERED: Since I can’t figure out a way to mark the question as Answered, I’ll do it here.
I would also like to say thank you to everyone who responded. All the back and forth answered questions I’d never even thought to ask.
With these responses, I’m now quite comfortable torrenting and browsing simultaneously.
Thank you all!
No, not if your torrent client is bound to your VPN.
Lol this literally could be my question.
Deanonymization is easy as hell. Even if they can’t link your torrenting to your web sessions immediately, they can get logs from the VPN provider, threatening to hold the VPN responsible if they don’t release this information, and see that you were in fact torrenting. And if you think there’s no log because the VPN provider told you there’s no log, you’d be wrong. They are in fact required to log and keep logs temporarily for “lawful intercept” purposes, and if asked by government to monitor you, they may be required to keep logs of your activity indefinitely. I say “indefinitely” rather than “permanently” because they may be allowed to purge the logs after they hand them off to the government, or after the order is over, etc. And they are required to keep you from knowing you’re being monitored, so the common practice is to claim a no-logs policy “unless required by law”, protected by gag orders.
They will then see:
-What trackers you connected to
-What peers you connected to
-What websites you connected to
What they will not see unless this VPN replaced your root certificate, is the contents of any encrypted connection you make to peers, trackers, or websites. That being said, if you need a proprietary app to connect to the VPN, it’s probably replacing your root certificate so it can see your encrypted traffic, likely as part of that “lawful intercept” requirement.
That being said, they won’t go through such effort, as they already have Facebook, Twitter, and other Big Tech media with cross-site tracking to identify you regardless of your VPN session.
But since torrenting isn’t web, if you put your torrent client behind a VPN while browsing without one, you’re a lot safer, and you’ll just have to hope your VPN provider isn’t watching for torrent activity like your ISP may be.
Now if a copyright holder or copyright troll is willing to spend the extra time, and the VPN provider hasn’t discarded the logs yet, they could still rat you out, as they’ll be asking who connected to X tracker and Y peers at Z time. But if that’s who you’re up against, the only winning move is to go get a cup of coffee or borrow someone’s wifi. That all aside, with a subreddit full of people using VPNs to torrent, chances are it’s a dead end for most copyright holders.
So what you want to hear is: yes, in an ideal world with god-like adversaries without bureaucracy, it would be a bad idea. Bad for “opsec”
In practice as it wont matter. Think of the options the other side has and how they would approach in collecting this information from their PoV. near impossible. You’re not Assange.
Thanks. A side question if you may indulge me.
With different Firefox profiles created, one for banking and social media and gmail, and other separate profile for geo locked streaming, is there any way that the cookies and trackers from 1 Firefox profile can somehow get and track me from profile 2, even though I haven’t logged in using profile 2.
If you’re torrent client and your VPN are both connected and bound it still connects your whole computer to the VPN.
There is no need for making Firefox profiles for each thing you do on the web. And cookies are tied to your actual browser rather than your IP. It’s not tied to a Firefox profile either.
If you’re really that worried you’d maybe wanna look at either 1. Using a VM with a VPN or 2. Look into using Tails.
Both of those are unnecessary tho. Tbh don’t worry about all of this much. The way I look at it is basically if you’re using the internet, you can and are being “tracked” in some way. But ultimately who is going to single me or you out randomly and cause whatever problems to us? Nobody is going to do that. The only reason someone should possibly worry about being tracked I’d if you’re some big criminal and you have the FBI looking for you lol.
Some food for thought - Things like data breaches happen constantly and there’s a high chance your info from a breach has already been out there and nothings happened to you
I feel no matter how many precautions etc you can take to prevent being tracked, jf someone was that dead set on it, they’ll figure out how to find your info eventually
Good point and makes sense. I mean I use VPNs regularly and yes from the same vpn ip address will undoubtedly have a dozen people who are logged into google alone, so if there is torrenting traffic simultaneously from the vpn ip, that can’t magically be linked to you just by asking google.
Google will of course know the ip and port and since you are logged in know exactly who you are anyway, but it’s a long leap to say that if you are torrenting then suddenly that can be tied to you too using google.
Why? That’s how it works.
So? What does that have to do with OPs question?
You cannot be identified through a non-logging VPN.
AND, your last comment is nullified if you happen to be using split tunneling.
I agree with your points, and I did think about using Virtualbox and I’ve heard that I can keep all my Firefox tabs open and logged in, and then just save that instance and exit out of Virtualbox, and if tomorrow I want to log back in, I can just restore that instance.
Seems very convenient, but I’m just wondering wouldn’t google ask me to relogin because the cookies would be for the day before… 
As you said Tails is way overkill, I liked the idea of Tor but the reality is i am happy if I keep the big data aggregators out of my business or siloed into their own browser profile.
That’s the intent behind my question.
If I can “get away” with different profiles to avoid tracking at a reasonable level, then I don’t want to unnecessarily take the extra effort of Virtualbox and Tor, much less full blown Tails.
Makes sense, thank you.
There is a case i remember where a Hong Kong based vpn company which was supposedly claiming to be not logging, themselves asked (some foreign govt agency? I forget) for a port number to confirm if a user that was being investigated was connected to their service or not.
I think the vpn company said we have a shared ip system so just the ip address isnt enough BUT if you give us a port number then we can pinpoint the user for you.
They actually said this and were later mocked and their trust tanked.
I think I read this on TF but I’m not sure.
It’s very reasonable to expect that it won’t be long before copyright trolls come after vpns and demand they keep logs and this is why as you said in your reply, a no logs vpn is a great buffer for worry free Linux Iso’s downloading.
But yes to your last point, from what I’ve read, the court cases have already enough other evidence for their case and use anything that any logging vpn company gives to just add another nail to that coffin.
Your post reminded me that NAT is fascinating but PAT even more so!