There are three types of VPN leaks that expose your real identity online: DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, and IPv6 leaks. Each one works differently, but all three produce the same result, your actual IP address becomes visible to websites, advertisers, and anyone monitoring your connection, even when your VPN shows as connected.
Most people who use a VPN believe they are invisible online. They are not always right.
The problem is not that VPNs fail to encrypt your traffic. Most do that part correctly. The problem is that encryption is not the only thing that exposes you. There are three separate technical pathways, each one independent of the others, through which your real IP address, your real location, and your real ISP can leak out to any server you connect to, with your VPN showing fully active the entire time.
Understanding all three types of VPN leaks is the first step to knowing whether your connection is actually private, or just appears to be.
Why Your VPN Can Be Connected and Still Be Leaking Your Real Identity
The three types of VPN leaks that expose real users are DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, and IPv6 leaks, and each one bypasses your VPN through a different mechanism.
This matters because most people troubleshoot privacy problems the same way: they check if the VPN is connected, see that it is, and assume the problem lies elsewhere. But a connected VPN and a leak-free VPN are two different things entirely.
A DNS leak does not break your VPN connection. A WebRTC leak does not disable encryption. An IPv6 leak does not drop your tunnel.
Each one exploits a gap in how your device, browser, or operating system handles traffic alongside the VPN, not through it.
According to ENISA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, IP address exposure through protocol-level failures is consistently ranked among the most underreported causes of identity disclosure in privacy-conscious users. The leak is invisible to the user. The exposure is not invisible to anyone watching.
What Each of the 3 VPN Leak Types Does to Your Privacy
DNS Leaks
DNS leaks are the most common of the three types of VPN leaks, and they exploit the way your device resolves domain names into IP addresses. Every time you type a website address into your browser, your device sends a DNS query to translate that name into a numerical IP address.
If your VPN does not force those queries through its own private DNS resolver, your operating system sends them to your ISP’s DNS server instead, completely outside the encrypted tunnel. Your ISP receives every domain you visit, in real time, attached to your real IP address.
WebRTC Leaks
WebRTC leaks are a browser-level exposure built into Chrome, Firefox, and Edge by design. WebRTC powers real-time features like video calls and peer-to-peer file sharing, and to establish those connections it uses STUN servers to discover your device’s real IP address at a layer below the VPN tunnel.
A webpage running background JavaScript can trigger this process silently, without any visible action from you, and log your actual IP address without your knowledge.
IPv6 Leaks
IPv6 leaks occur on dual-stack networks, which are connections that support both the older IPv4 addressing system and the newer IPv6 system. Most VPNs are built to tunnel IPv4 traffic only. If your ISP has assigned you an IPv6 address and your VPN does not block or route IPv6 traffic, every request sent using IPv6 travels outside the tunnel entirely.
Any server that supports IPv6 receives your real ISP-assigned address on every connection, regardless of which VPN server you are connected to.
What These Leaks Mean for You in Practice
Any one of these three leak types is sufficient to identify you completely, and attackers who know what to look for will probe for all three.
A DNS leak gives your ISP a full log of every domain you visit, timestamped and tied to your real IP address. Your ISP can retain that data for months under data retention laws in many countries, and that log can be requested by third parties, sold to advertisers, or exposed in a data breach. The fact that your traffic was encrypted in transit does not change what the DNS query already revealed.
A WebRTC leak is particularly dangerous for anyone using a VPN to maintain anonymity across multiple sessions. Because WebRTC discovers your real IP at the browser level, a single visit to a malicious or compromised site can permanently associate your real IP with whatever identity or account you used during that session.
47% of cyberattacks begin with reconnaissance, according to IBM’s X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, and a confirmed real IP address from a WebRTC leak is among the highest-value data points in that phase.
An IPv6 leak undoes the VPN at the network layer. If a website or tracker receives your IPv6 address, they have your real ISP, your real region, and a persistent identifier that does not change when you switch VPN servers or reconnect. Every session using IPv6 adds to a profile that cannot be anonymized after the fact.
The common thread across all three is that none of them trigger a warning. Your VPN status indicator stays green. Your encrypted connection stays active. The leak happens quietly, and it keeps happening on every connection until something closes it.
Run PureVPN’s IP Leak Test now
How to Test for All 3 VPN Leak Types at Once
PureVPN’s IP Leak Test checks for DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, and IPv6 leaks in a single scan, showing you exactly what is visible to the outside world with your current connection.
- Connect to PureVPN and choose any server location.
- Open PureVPN’s IP Leak Test. Run the full scan.
- Read the results. Any address that matches your real ISP or home location, rather than the PureVPN server you selected — is a confirmed leak.
- Note which leak type is flagging.
If PureVPN is working correctly, nothing in the results should point back to your real identity. Every visible address should belong to your chosen server.
How PureVPN Closes All Three Leak Types Permanently
Closing a VPN leak requires addressing each leak type at the layer where it actually occurs, and PureVPN is built to handle all three without requiring any manual configuration from the user.
PureVPN prevents DNS leaks by routing every DNS query through its own private, zero-log DNS servers. Your ISP’s resolver never receives your queries, never logs the domains you visit, and never builds a record that can be retained, sold, or subpoenaed.
For WebRTC, PureVPN’s configuration suppresses the local IP discovery process that browsers use during STUN server negotiation, so no webpage can trigger a real-IP ICE candidate response regardless of what JavaScript it runs.
For IPv6, PureVPN enforces full IPv6 leak protection by blocking unrouted IPv6 traffic before it can exit the device, ensuring that dual-stack networks never send your ISP-assigned address to external servers.
PureVPN’s kill switch completes the protection. If your VPN tunnel drops for any reason, a network transition, a brief disconnect, a device waking from sleep, the kill switch cuts your internet connection before a single packet of unprotected traffic leaves your device. No window. No gap. No leak.
Three Leak Types. One Test. No Guessing.
DNS leaks, WebRTC leaks, and IPv6 leaks are each capable of fully identifying you behind an active VPN connection, and all three are silent. You will not see a warning. Your VPN status will not change. The exposure simply continues until something actively closes each gap.
84% of VPN users tested were leaking something. Most of them thought they were protected. The only way to know which side of that statistic you are on is to run the test.
Arsalan Rashid
April 1, 2026
14 hours ago
