I was using proton vpn on my laptop which is running linux mint, I decided to check my ip address out of boredom. When ran through duckduckgo my vpn’s ip shows up, when I go to another ip search such as https://whatismyipaddress.com/ it revealed my true IP. I was shocked, and wondered if this was a glitch, so I tested it several times over. I got the same result. I switched to firefox, and when I went to whatismyip it showed my vpn’s IP. If I am making no sense, I incline you to test it yourself.
PS: I used multiple vpn locations too
Enable your vpn-- open brave-- type ip into duckduckgo–click on whatismyipadress.com
This should show your real IP then.
My system: linux mint 20.3 xfce, brave browser version 1.41.100
None of those worked, so I completely deleted it and reinstalled it. It works fine now. I honestly thought it was a virus at first, so I started a clam av scan, rummaged through all my files, and was searching every process in my task manager. Everything came up clean. The only other possibility could of been some corrupted package or something. I’m not gonna obsess over it though.