I was just reading through the interview process for RED, and they specifically forbid the use of VPN during the interview. I don’t understand this requirement, and it seems like it would just leak your IP address to the IRC host, which could potentially be used against you in a honeypot scenario. Once they have your IP, they could link that with the credentials used with the tracker while you are torrenting, regardless of if you used VPN while torrenting.
My point wasn’t so much that I think RED is shady but that exposing my IP seems like an unnecessary requirement to join. Why can I not have my membership tracked via an anonymous account? If they are concerned about account harvesting or something, then the interview already seems like a good enough measure, accompanied by seed ratio minimums.