Android skips some of the traffic, even if Always-on VPN is enabled

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Android skips some of the traffic, even if Always-on VPN is enabled

VPN provider Mullvad VPN has found that Android skips traffic every time the device connects to a Wi-Fi network, even if the "Block connections without VPN" or "Always on VPN" functions are enabled.

Data leaking outside of VPN tunnels includes source IP addresses, DNS queries, HTTPS traffic, and probably also NTP traffic.

This behavior is built into the Android operating system. But many users probably didn't know about it until now due to the inaccurate description of the "VPN blocking" functions in the Android documentation.

Mullvad discovered this leak during a security audit and published a warning to draw attention to this issue and put additional pressure on Google.

Google replied that this feature will not be fixed as "The impact on privacy is minimal."

As Mullvad VPN explains:

"The traffic that leaks outside the VPN connection contains metadata that can be used to obtain confidential information and deanonymize, for example, the location of Wi-Fi access points."

In addition, Mullvad explains that even if the leaks are not fixed, Google should at least update the documentation to correctly indicate that "Connection Checks" will not be protected by the "Block Connections without VPN" feature.

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