Gaming My god PeerBlock blocks a lot

[Urza]

Of course you're sure of that. After all, you're always right with everything. I've seen you post, you're always right. Feel free to be sure about stuff all you want.

The fact that you resort to a personal attack instead of a valid rebuttal to my post reinforces that sarcastic logic.

 

[Vigilante]

Wait,what if any of those did;nt get block,does it affect anything?

 

[Originality]

Wait,what if any of those did;nt get block,does it affect anything?

If you mean the IPs PeerBlock blocks, then it's actually hard to tell. There is no evidence that the people who use PB are safe because they use PB. Likewise, there's no evidence that the people who get caught, would've been safe if they had used PB.

All I can say is that I've never used PB myself (a couple of my friends do), and I've never got a letter from my ISP. And one of my friends (only one, so I can't tell if it's an isolated case) who uses PB has received a warning letter from their ISP.
EDIT: Maybe I'm safe because I wear a red t-shirt half the time...

 

[FAST6191]

Well the other side of the debate seems to have runs its course and I have already said my bit

Not saying it is the case but there is potential-

Over the years they have been various attacks on the torrent protocol including stuff like endpoint/VPN bypass attacks (there were ways to pass things out over local IPs where the actual data flow was over a proxy* or similar tech) and other interesting things http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U87Mng7aEA let alone honeytraps (I have seen various servers, not necessarily for torrents, have to remain up as honeytraps after a court order over the years), adverts (think some of the unique single pixel image email tracking methods although I agree page impressions means very little) and tracker attacks (tracker software has not traditionally been brilliant on the security front let alone breathing down the neck of an admin- the owner might net a fortune from ads but the staff might just get a nice stipend) or even simple mapping that trackers and most clients allow (see some of the graphical swarm representations afforded by some clients).

*again for the sake of argument I assume they are anonymous proxies that do not send X forwarded for or equivalents.

Likewise with DHT and if so called trackerless stuff takes off more does that not mean even if we assume IP blocklists are flawless or at the very least only troubled by false positives would that not mean if just one person lacks the software in a swarm (DHT/magnet links famously being able to bypass many tracker side security measures) you are all screwed. This is before we get into some of the more interesting things like torrent editing and proper undercover work.

Given these people can hoodwink the law, usually by finding a civil law (remember burden of proof is substantially less for civil law) judge who still calls it the electric light bill or on the flipside abusing aspects of criminal law (I am not sure if it has changed by now but in the UK companies would file a criminal case, use evidence gathering procedures, drop the criminal case but keep the evidence for use in civil courts), into believing an IP is enough (or at least enough to obtain warrants).......


Also re truecrypt ignoring any laws forcing keys to be revealed (the UK and many customs in various countries are pretty keen on such things) it is not just the use of them that is necessary and there are ways around it* and equivalents even if we ignore things like cold boot attacks.

*thinking you might shred a file but, especially if it is automated, you might not have shred the rar files it came from. A full set of scene style rars files or serious evidence thereof being especially damning and I could see arguing based on a set of matching 512 byte packets fished from a cache file/directory (doubly so if, as I assume, they contain things like routing data or fingerprints of methods in addition to file data) and beyond. Equally assuming you have picked a "good" password there are some fairly popular companies among law enforcement that will do things like search your drive for every string (who knows what gets written where*) and couple it with basic dictionary attacks and maybe a psych profile/basic traits (string+ notable years or numbers).

*this is not just paranoia- any would be security tester or hacker will probe programs to see what remains in memory (or indeed page files). The first and many subsequent HD DVD attacks, the wii common key and several more coming from such lax security if you need examples of high grade stuff and countless cache attacks on browsers over the years (including the famous CSS cache history attack which is only just getting around to being mitigated- http://www.alanayoub.com/css-history-hack/ ).

Short version- security has to be multi layered and ip blocklists alone do not do much for this given other aspects.

Re "However, there is no reason for your ISP to be monitoring you"
Widen your eyes to the world at large- there are several calls by many groups to have ISPs retain serious logs for a great length of time ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/18/au...leaked_minutes/ as just one recent example). How far advanced such things are is a different matter and how effective they might be (I have brought down out about 4 gigs of data today despite only waking up a couple of hours ago and there being nothing really worth grabbing for me today).

 

[Deleted-188346]

Re "However, there is no reason for your ISP to be monitoring you"
Widen your eyes to the world at large- there are several calls by many groups to have ISPs retain serious logs for a great length of time ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/18/au...leaked_minutes/ as just one recent example). How far advanced such things are is a different matter and how effective they might be (I have brought down out about 4 gigs of data today despite only waking up a couple of hours ago and there being nothing really worth grabbing for me today).
I already stated that ISPs do hold information. However, it's not in their benefit to be banning you from their service, unless another company (or law enforcement) has the evidence, and reason, to discipline users.

Whether that discipline is a warning, termination of services, or court date, is up to the company.

They won't actively use stored information about user activity unless:
- It raised major red flags with the law.
- A company has legal evidence against a user.

QUOTE(FAST6191 @ Mar 18 2011, 12:24 PM) Short version- security has to be multi layered and ip blocklists alone do not do much for this given other aspects.

This is true. Although when it comes to the topic of companies monitoring torrents, it seems that they mostly do not take a multi-layered approach, and thus, a multi-layered solution is not needed. Sure, if they really wanted to get you, they could easily do so.