Does peerblock work?

W

wolfkiss

New member
I've been wanting to increase my online security for awhile now and have a few questions...

1 - would upgrading my nod32 anti-virus to the entire "internet suite" make a difference? do those software firewalls really do anything? I'm pretty sure my router has spi and nat firewall already.

2 - does peerblock work? i only use private sites, except for very rare occasions. and if so, should i only enable the spyware and antip2p lists? or could enabling all 4 have a benefit.

3 - any other good protection methods aside from seedboxes and vpns?

4 - any private trackers out there with unsafe rep? I know TL is one of them..

I'm a small time pirate, mostly downloading games and tv shows, or older movies. I dont download music or newer movies nearly as often, and I think those are the big targets. I still want as much protection as I can afford though, which isn't much :lol:

thanks!
 
I started using PeerBlock a few months ago. When I did, I was surprised by the number of very recognizable corporate names that were being blocked. Also a lot were notorious "anti-p2p" entities. I posted here that I had been using it and there were some critics and some believers.

I have continued to use it. It really is your call as to whether or not you want to use it. It has not caused me any trouble.
 
megabyteme said:
When I did, I was surprised by the number of very recognizable corporate names that were being blocked. Also a lot were notorious "anti-p2p" entities.
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Same here, I started using it not too long ago and it's been working well for me. I guess it can't really hurt you to be using it anyway..
 
about peerblock, it goes both ways:

pros: it indeed blocks a lot of potentially dangerous IPs. It can get very alarming when you go check the logs and see the amount of IPs blocked at some very popular trackers

cons: it does block many valid IPs, mostly universities and host ranges. The impact it can have is to decrease your download speed, though in my particular case, doesn't affect at all, as I always max out my DL speed.

I don't use peerblock, I use the ipfilter.dat on my torrents client, but it's mostly the same thing, as they share their block lists.

About places where I get a lot of people on the block list, private trackers speaking, the big ones as TL, IPt etc, and some at bcg. At the other places it's very very rare to get people blocked.
 
hmm ill probably use it then...cant hurt right?

i have a few questions on settings...

there are 4 lists...spyware, antip2p, advertising, and education. any recommendations on which ones to use? all of them? just antip2p and spyware?

i assume if i use the education list it will disallow a lot of file sharing between college students, which would be bad, i think.

also, i get the message, stopped displaying allowed packets for performance reasons. should i check show allowed connections or not?

thanks!
 
Then you should be fine, only ports you manually opened and active connections are forwarded, everything else will be discarded.

2 - does peerblock work? i only use private sites, except for very rare occasions. and if so, should i only enable the spyware and antip2p lists? or could enabling all 4 have a benefit.
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The program is to block certain addresses, and yes that works. However, blocking certain addresses does not make your downloading safe per se.
Also, you might block seedboxes, because not only snitches can rent a server there; if you don't, how do you know if snitch or not?

3 - any other good protection methods aside from seedboxes and vpns?
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No, actually there isn't much you can do... one swarm and everybody connects to everyone else, so it's infiltrated or it isn't...

In the U.S., they also send a lot of warnings for TV series - I do not think they really care in Italy, but I don't know!

Col. Skillz said:
any recommendations on which ones to use? all of them? just antip2p and spyware?
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That's what I did as well.

should i check show allowed connections or not?
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Will mostly be useless information unless you want to monitor something specific, there will be a whole lot of allowed connections that don't mean anything at all.
 
it gives you false security... you think all the baddies are banned... but they are not...

when they have so much hard time getting a difficult private tracker... do you really thing they would trow everything away by using well known anti-p2p addresses?

peerblock and the like are perfect for public torrents/public p2p... when they are on private trackers they are doing a little more advanced investigations and are using common ips.....
 
I would definitely recommend peerblock. It has never hurt my DL speeds or caused any problems.

Also, downloading from public trackers just once got me before (isohunt, if i remember). Since then, I started using Peerblock and only going on private trackers and I've had no issues.
 
I have just downloaded peerblock. From what i hear i can be very useful. unfortunately it simply doesn't work on my laptop.
I am told i have- "10 lists: 0 up to date - 10 failed updating - 10 disabled"
I try to update it manually with the 'check updates' button but i am either told 'Error contacting URL' or that it is 100% completed yet nothing has actually happened.
Please help me!
 
Thanks for your speeds reply guys. unfortunately those links aren't working for me. they won't load.
as for VPN's, i don't understand the technicalities of how it works or who is best to connect to. a noob like me is best off keeping things simple :)
any other suggestions/alternate manual download links?

okay, i've been on the iblocklist website. i noticed their update link were different. they included their own url instead of an update from the bluetack website. i changed my lists to match these new ones. now i have a different problem. an error message comes up saying "exception occured" and a load of comptuter ramblings. have you ever encountered this problem?
 
Basically, a VPN allows you form part of a private network while away from it, transferring communication and data over another channel - the Internet. Because it's easy for someone to eavesdrop on that traffic, encryption may be used. For commercial VPN services, the attractive isn't forming part of a virtual LAN, but getting data through their servers to your computer encrypted.

now i have a different problem. an error message comes up saying "exception occured" and a load of comptuter ramblings.
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Sounds like a problem with your computer, rather than the site. Try disabling any running antivirus, antispyware and firewall programs that may be conflicting.
 
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