It is inevitable that either because of a shaky ISP connection or some other network or software problem your Internet or VPN connection will drop at some point. In some cases you will not get a visible warning and you will carry on browsing or sharing files peer to peer as normal with your computer IP exposed for everyone to see.

The worst part of your VPN connection dropping out and not getting a warning is that you will not realize of this and your anonymous Internet surfing will have been compromised without you ever knowing, your OpenVPN software normally automatically reconnects after the VPN connection has dropped but by then your computer IP will have been compromised.

How to stop a VPN disconnection showing your computer IP?

• Use a software application to stop IP exposure after VPN disconnection

VPN LifeGuard: Open source freeware application to protect yourself in the event of a VPN disconnection. It basically blocks Internet access in the event of a VPN disruption. (Windows)

VPNCheck: VPNCheck will disable your web browser or any other specified application to stop your real IP being exposed when your VPN connection breaks.(Windows/Linux)

VPNetMon: VPNetMon prevents unsecured connections after your VPN connection goes down, VPNetMon will close down the specified applications when your Virtual Private Network disconnects. (Windows)

• Use a firewall to force all your applications through the VPN:

Using a software firewall you can tell it to allow applications to connect only through the VPN, including your browser, the only downside to this is that firewalls all have very different configuration settings and you will probably need to read the documentation or ask at some computing forum about how to bind your browser with your VPN connection.

The firewall that comes with Windows is very limited and I am not sure if you can force all traffic through the VPN using Windows firewall, if you need a good free high quality software firewall consider PCTools Firewall or Comodo Firewall instead.