[nextaccountic]

> What good is a VPN when multiple apps on your computer are phoning home?

The point of a VPN is that whenever an app phone home, they will do so through the VPN. Standard VPN configuration (which I supose the Mullvad client performs?) is to entirely disallow any traffic that doesn't go through the VPN

[Root_Denied]

You're missing the reason this is important - the companies that run those apps (spotify, facebook, steam, discord, etc.) will be able to correlate your VPN connection with your non-VPN connection, and tie those both to an app account that identifies you.

It means unless you've got a dedicated download/seed box running your torrent downloads, one that doesn't have anything else on it and never connects to anything without a VPN connect, it's possible to track you down way more easily than you would think.

[kelnos]

Another easier option is to run the VPN client and torrent client in a Docker container, with networking separate from the host machine. Then the only thing using the VPN is the torrent client.