Frequently asked questions

What is a leak?

The main purpose of using a proxy, VPN or anonymity service is to hide your identity and location. A leak in this context is any information that could be traced back to your true identity. Most users are concerned about leaking their true IP address, but other information such as your location, browser and operating system can also be used to detect a user who is trying to hide their identity.

Who cares if I’m leaking?

Any website or service with an interest in your real identity or location will be interested in what you’re leaking. Netflix and YouTube want to stop people getting around their geoblocking. Leak detection can be used to prevent all sorts of nefarious activities from blog comment spam to credit card fraud. And lots of people are very keen to find who exactly is seeding those torrents so generously.

Am I secure if every test comes up green?

Whilst green lights for every test shows a relatively private system, there’s simply no way to ensure you’re completely secure. We test a lot of the known leak factors, but not all of them, and our tests could be inaccurate or buggy. If your VPN dies while you’re using it, your connections could also be rerouted.

Port scanning of your IP address would also reveal more information about your situation. We cannot perform those scans as your ISP would send us angry messages. But a malicious website won't be so sensitive about upsetting ISPs like we are.

Finally, unknown exploits are always a hidden danger and new ones are always being discovered.

What tests do you run?

See a full explanation of our tests.

Why should I avoid services like this if I’m really serious about privacy?

This service is meant to be a simple check, and isn’t built for high level privacy analysis. Even using this test leaks some of your information. Think about it, a website like this is a great way to collect lots of data from unsuspecting users like yourself. Of course, we can assure you we’re not a three letter agency or malicious… but that’s exactly what somebody malicious would say, isn’t it?

But seriously, do you use this test for evil?

To give you a test result we have to track your data and archive it for a small amount of time. We try to keep archiving time as low as possible, right now we average under 3 minutes. However, we don’t run our own data center, so the logging of our server provider can affect if and how long data about your requests might be stored.

A privacy checker which requires Javascript, isn't this an oxymoron?

You are right, disabling Javascript is one of the first steps to take when you get serious about protecting your online privacy. We’re working on providing a non-Javascript version of our test suite, but as there are lots of websites requiring Javascript and our motivation is to raise awareness of privacy leaks in general this check still makes sense.