_    __      _     ___   __     __ 
| |  / /___  (_)___/ / | / /__  / /_
| | / / __ \/ / __  /  |/ / _ \/ __/
| |/ / /_/ / / /_/ / /|  /  __/ /_  
|___/\____/_/\__,_/_/ |_/\___/\__/  

𝒩𝑒𝓉𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒶𝑒𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇. 🌌
--------------------------------╖
    Fixing QBittorrent Cookie   |
    Tracking Issue              |
                                |
    QBittorrent has a cookie    |
    issue. Let's fix it         |
--------------------------------|
    Kevin Froman                |
    VoidNetwork LLC             | 
    April 17, 2021            	|
    kev[-@-]voidnet.tech	|
--------------------------------╝

(TL;DR: QBittorrent persists cookies which can harm privacy with no benefit
for most users, I made a script to fix this)

	I regard QBittorrent as the best desktop open source torrent client.
However, it (as of version 4.3.4.1) has one hidden issue in that it stores
cookies from torrent trackers (and RSS + search plugin) as a protection against
odd web server rules breaking things. It seems to store these cookies
persistently across application loads.

	Though it is not the intent, this makes it so that your specific client
can be fingerprinted accurately without any plausible deniability regardless
of IP/VPN. The most serious case I can imagine of this would be a user who
normally uses a VPN but switches it off and thinks their privacy is fine
because they are not sharing anything sensitive in that moment.

	If you use QBittorrent and don't need cookies for RSS/similar,
I recommend you use my script on startup or shutdown of QBittorrent. It should
erase all your QBittorrent cookies.

If I made any mistakes or oversights, don't hesitate to email me.


#!/usr/bin/env python3

import os
from os.path import expanduser
from configparser import SafeConfigParser

# This script nukes qBittorrent cookies

qb_f = expanduser("~") + '/.config/qBittorrent/qBittorrent.conf'


config = SafeConfigParser()
config.optionxform = str 

config.read(qb_f)

config['Network']['Cookies'] = ''


with open(qb_f, 'w') as configfile:
    config.write(configfile)

print("Cleared QBittorrent cookies")