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Proxy glossary

What is a WebRTC leak?

A WebRTC leak is a browser exposing your real local or public IP address through WebRTC, bypassing the proxy that carries your ordinary page traffic.

WebRTC leak explained

Also called WebRTC IP leak.

WebRTC is the browser feature behind video calls and peer-to-peer data. To find a route between two peers it gathers candidate addresses, which can include your local network address and your public IP, and any page script can ask for them. That traffic can use UDP outside the proxy path, so a page sees your real address next to the proxy one.

Proxying page loads does not cover it. The HTTP request leaves through the proxy, the WebRTC probe does not, and a script can compare the two.

Browsers give some control. Firefox has the media.peerconnection.enabled setting in about:config. Chrome has an enterprise policy, WebRtcIPHandling, that limits which addresses are exposed, and extensions can set the same option. Newer browsers hide local addresses behind mDNS names, which stops the local leak but not a public one.

What leaks is your real IP address, and sometimes your local network address, from outside the proxy. For privacy that undoes the proxy: the site learns where you actually connect from. For location testing it makes the result unreliable, because a page that reads the WebRTC address sees where you really are, not the proxy location, and can treat the visit accordingly. Antidetect browsers usually have a per-profile WebRTC setting for this. Test with a WebRTC leak page while the proxy is on.

For example

You set a proxy in a browser profile and an IP check page shows the proxy address. A WebRTC test on the same profile lists your home address as well. The proxy covers the page requests only; the WebRTC setting still needs limiting.

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