> You probably leak your IP somewhere

I probably leaked my home address somewhere as well. Doesn't mean you got it.

Which is why you do use the VPN for gaming-related purposes such as a voice chat service, while when you visit Hacker News a VPN isn't necessary.

VPNs work adequately for this purpose. They work terrific to avoid civil lawsuits as well. What they're terrible for is avoiding law enforcement. But that isn't what we're discussing here.

>Which is why you do use the VPN for gaming-related purposes such as a voice chat service, while when you visit Hacker News a VPN isn't necessary.

No you usually don't. Games and voice chat don't usually leak your IP to someone else. P2P in games is very rare, as is voice chat. Discord/Mumble/Teamspeak don't reveal your IP to a random user. Now if you join a Mumble/Teamspeak server, the admin can of course see your IP. But if you get ddosed right after you join such a server ... you know who is responsible.

>VPNs work adequately for this purpose. They work terrific to avoid civil lawsuits as well. What they're terrible for is avoiding law enforcement. But that isn't what we're discussing here.

True

You're talking about casual gaming on public Team Speak / Ventrilo servers.

I'm talking about gaming where the voice chat server is owned or administrated by a clan/group/guild/team (or whatever nomenclature). If you're half serious gaming, you don't use public servers. Their reliability is comparable to Discord, minus the profiling.

Then where do you leak the IP that will get you ddosed?

I wasn't talking about public vs "private" servers. The fact that the admin can see your IP applies to all.

Corrupt admin on a private, rival server.

Avoidable (why should I go there if I have my own?) and easily detectable (I only get ddosed after joining that server).

Because you got a match against them? Because you have friends in their group? Or peers? In the game I played, the top players knew each other.

Actually, you got a good idea who does the DDoS; "supporters" (hooligans) of group X, who got your IP from admin of voice chat server of group X.

>Because you got a match against them? Because you have friends in their group? Or peers? In the game I played, the top players knew each other.

So it's avoidable. Just use another server which maybe you, or a neutral party controls. Doesn't matter if they know eachother. Having a match against them is not a factor, if you play vs. them you don't need to be in voice chat with your enemy to begin with, but maybe you have an example of a game where this is common.

>Actually, you got a good idea who does the DDoS; "supporters" (hooligans) of group X, who got your IP from admin of voice chat server of group X.

Then don't join group X. It's simple really. Or you gather evidence, seems simple enough if you just write timestamps.

You don't know beforehand who is going to DDoS you, or when. So, re: avoidable, a sensible solution is to just use a VPN for that specific purpose. Its easy to set up, cheap, and the added latency for voice chat is negligible.

Yes, but you know it afterwards. It's the overkill solution to a (probably) very small problem.

You don't have to route 0/0 through the VPN...

Then it's even more useless. Just use tethering.