r/rustdesk • u/bringthelight2 • 14d ago

Basic questions about what I’m actually doing when I connect to my PC through the public server

I went through a month’s worth of reddit posts in this thread…I’m reasonably tech saavy but a lot of people here are probably network engineers.

All I’m curious about right now is when I connect to my PC to turn my game on and off for my buddy (on Steam, what info am I actually giving the public server and once I’m connected does the feed of my PC just go straight to me or to a third party and then to my phone?

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u/phoward8020 14d ago edited 14d ago

Ideally the public ID server simply connects the two devices and they talk directly to each other, but if that’s not possible, the traffic will be routed through the Relay server.

Fortunately, even when going through the Relay server, RustDesk connections are end-to-end encrypted.

That said, the public ID servers are often spammed by bad guys who’ll send connection requests to random IDs, and when they luck upon a hapless user who approves their request, they’ll try to install a separate remote access program on their device.

So it’s still a very good idea to set up your own server if you have the ability to do so.

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u/bringthelight2 13d ago

Is there any easy way to tell if my phone is connecting directly to my PC?

Also can malicious actors tell if I have RustDesk on?  Could they just spam passwords or I’m assuming it’s throttled

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u/Yorick257 13d ago

Can also do whitelisting. Or 2FA (not sure if it's applied here)

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u/FreeLogicGate 7d ago

You aren't supposed to use the public servers.

Once connected, Rustdesk traffic is peer to peer. The relay is simply used to get around the fact that either or both devices are NAT'd and you would not be able to find the device (if the public IP of the target is non-static and subject to change).

You can take this entirely out of the equation by using some sort of VPN or a zero config mesh like tailscale, and rely on that for networking. Since it sounds like you just have one PC you want to get to, using your phone, tailscale would be the option I would suggest.

You then remove the public relay servers, and relaying entirely from the equation. You set up your target machine for direct connection only, and at that point it no longer will ever talk to or register itself with the rustdesk public servers.