Gaming My god PeerBlock blocks a lot

[ShadowSoldier]

Have you seen what sort of stuff it blocks?

Right now I'm running uTorrent downloading the newest episode of "The Event". And I've been getting into the habit of turning on PeerBlock before I download. Anyways, curiously, I decided to look at what it was blocking, just look at this list:

Time Warner Telecom, Inc.
AT&T Possible Macrovision
IBM Global Network Europe
C.O.R.E. Digital Productions
National Center of Resources and Technologies

To people who use PeerBlock, does it block this sort of stuff for you too?

 

[mad567]

Yes peerblock it's the perfect security tool for downloading

..
i use it all the time

 

[Maz7006]

i've never even considered using it - then again i do hear that it does a great job.

 

[Seaking]

PeerBlock is a load of crap.

if you are on ANY really good torrent sites just about everyone advises you to not use any kind of blocking software.
why you saw?
cause it blocks a ton of legit users.

 

[zeromac]

Yea it blocks that stuff as well

 

[FAST6191]

I second the "it is completely pointless" crowd.

It is not like it can stop even a half competent investigator ( http://www.samair.ru/proxy/proxy-01.htm for a start), it takes valuable resources for no reason (see hosts file- all good internet capable operating systems have one or an equivalent loaded by default which does exactly the same as peerblock's main functionality and most people that maintain custom hosts files do a far better job).

Equally ignoring dynamic IP addressing (most big ISPs have static IP addresses as an optional extra) if any peers send you bad files repeatedly they usually can dropped by your torrent client.

 

[Rydian]

the newest episode of "The Event".
[...]
IBM Global Network Europe
[...]
National Center of Resources and Technologies

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER...

Peerblock is a placebo.

 

[dib]

And I always love how ignorant the anti-PB guys are.

It's a great utility and you can safely disregard anybody who tells your otherwise because they have no idea what they're talking about. At all. Not a single one. I've read it all before and haven't found one glimmer of sound reasoning.

Just watch out for legitimate connections from corporate IP ranges. For one example, if you or a family member play Pogo it will be blocked for traffic coming from EA servers. Fortunately, it takes all of a couple mouse clicks to permanently allow them (right click the entry in the window)

And don't go nuts for these first impressions. Not every one of those connections is something nefarious or some IP enforcement group with sinister intent. But on the whole, you're much better off now and you can laugh at your friends whenever they get a new disconnect warning from their ISP.

 

[Rydian]

I've read it all before and haven't found one glimmer of sound reasoning.

It leads users to believe it's blocking "malicious intent" (from their viewpoint) from all sorts of companies that have no vested interest in the download, which leads to a false sense of security.

Like the people who run without a virus scanner and claim they don't need one because they don't have a virus, I cannot sit by and let people think that peerblock magically makes them safe because then their inhibitions are affected and they may do something to seriously get in trouble (that they may not do otherwise).

 

[dib]

But it's not a _false_ sense of security if it's also doing a good job in blocking the ones that do monitor.

Like I said, I've heard this all before. There are plenty of ways that an agent _could_ get around it but generally they do not because there is so much easy picking with the way they already operate.

Did you ever read those leaked emails from Media Defender? Because I did, and it gives one a lot of insight into how these agents work. Suffice to say they follow the path of least resistance, and care less for tracking pirates than making money from arrangements with IP holders to produce _some kind_ of results.

FYI, it's not a placebo. In fact, it's exactly the opposite of your analogy because not running peerblock or using an ipfilter in conjunction with your BT client is very much like not running an anti virus. It doesn't mean you're magically immune to all viruses in every situation, but it reduces it from 100% certainty to maybe 3% and that's a good thing.

 

[Rydian]

Placebo wasn't the right word, but it still leads people to believe it's doing stuff it doesn't.

As long as that's made clear they can go ahead and use it, but as you can see in this case it wasn't.

 

[FAST6191]

Well it seems I have been challenged

I assert that peerblock offers nothing more than providing a tissue thin security method for what it claims is something worthwhile.

Peerblock- can be described as an IP address blocking tool with premade (and supposedly updated- false positives are a bit high really) lists for various purposes including
blocking known agents of copyright enforcement organisations
blocking known malware sites and locations

These appear to be the big two reasons for most people trying to use it. I hold a good DNS like openDNS and a good hosts list like http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ coupled with your basic sensible browsing practices takes care of the latter. All these are built in at OS level and having yet another piece of software running in the background (the code when I pulled it apart was not brilliant but I am not in a position at present to make proper claims here) doing nothing these functions do not already do just seems pointless and doubly so if you have a configurable firewall which is a far better prospect.

Known copyright enforcement types- sure corporate ranges might not be that troublesome to lose and for the very lowest levels of investigation might stop it but as investigation is often farmed out there is little point.

Media defender- I agree I would not trust most of those people to set up a home router let alone run a detective agency across networks (their testimony in court was enough to convince me of that) and that most of the companies playing in such arenas are a money making ruse/extortionists.
That does not mean it is safe and they are the only ones out there. Some of the European and Japanese interests (looking at games and anime respectively) do appear to have some fair skills and have got some good results. This is basically another twist on never ever assume the law is stupid.

If you wanted a proper security option buy a VPN, seedbox or usenet.


By all means debate but bring some ammunition.

 

[Originality]

Since you like challenges, try reading aloud your entire post three times through without stumbling on any words.

If you don't like challenges, try it anyway if only to learn a little about your own level of articulation. It's an interesting tip I learned in Creative Writing.

Back on topic... I agree that PeerBlock is little more than a level one filter. It would not do a thing to prevent agencies tracking you down and collecting evidence (in the form of logs) of your activities.

 

[Deleted-188346]

I don't see why people hold so much hatred towards PeerBlock. I've only used it once or twice, whilst downloading from torrents that people said were being watched (and their ISPs were sending them letters, etc).

Of course, I didn't get any letter, nor do I know whether that was due to PeerBlock or not. Odds are, that my ISP would have never sent a letter anyway.

But, considering it's a free program, what's the harm?
I've never heard anybody with a respectable education in networking (unless you guys are) claim that it's a pointless program.
If the program had literally no benefit to anybody, then why is it so popular, and why haven't I heard any criticism beyond GBATemp?

Why the hatin'?

 

[dib]

I won't dispute that there are better methods of security for the tech minded individual, but 99% of people utilizing bittorrent are not that tech minded. Whether you want to criticize them for this is up to you but out of the scope of my interest. And I suspect 99% of the complaints against Peerblock really boil down to resenting others for not sharing your habits or feeling the same way you do about IT matters. But anyways...

The concern of false positives is pretty much moot because at no time has the objective ever been to weed out the peers from this column vs the ones in column B with a vested interest in intellectual property materials and so forth. The client ultimately relies on IP lists compiled for various reasons and the fact that it happens to provide protection against select intellectual property groups and corporations is a nice benefit.

It's further irrelevant when we're talking about bittorrent where there are so many sources in any given cloud that you can afford some false positives and not detract from functionality in the least.

But I'm confused what sort of protection you think a firewall even affords in this context. Anybody running bittorrent has undoubtedly entered the ports into exceptions. You may as well have a nice shiny lock on your door but leave the key hanging from the knob.

Complaining about running a background process is also confusing and mysterious and seems downright petty. Peerblock runs great and uses very little system resources, even on older PCs. It has about a 1-3MB memory footprint and no noticeable processor consumption under task manager. And that's even on an old XP laptop circa 2003. It requires no effort maintain and is entirely self updating. So literally the worst thing you could have to say is that you detest having one more icon in your taskbar, and you could even disable that if you really wanted to and forget it's even on.

 

[dib]

I don't see why people hold so much hatred towards PeerBlock. I've only used it once or twice, whilst downloading from torrents that people said were being watched (and their ISPs were sending them letters, etc).

Of course, I didn't get any letter, nor do I know whether that was due to PeerBlock or not. Odds are, that my ISP would have never sent a letter anyway.

But, considering it's a free program, what's the harm?
I've never heard anybody with a respectable education in networking claim that it's a pointless program.
If the program had literally no benefit to anybody, then why is it so popular, and why haven't I heard any criticism beyond GBATemp?

Why the hatin'?

For the same reason that if you were sitting around listening to Metallica some fatty beardo in a stained shirt would waddle over and tell you how much better his favorite bands all are.

Just some anecdotal testimony that you can take for whatever you want: I've used Peerblock since it was Peer Guardian and never received a letter from my ISP. Anybody else I know on the same provider and pirating stuff has. My brother-in-law managed to get two of them shortly after discovering bittorrent, so I set up PB on his machine and he hasn't received another one since (which is good because the third is when they claim disconnection will result).

Personally, I download A LOT of stuff. But I know he has more mainstream tastes than I do, so he was jumping onto torrents for leaked movies and popular movies and albums within days of its release. So that certainly increases your chances since the IP holders have to pay these people to monitor torrents, and can only afford to engage in select properties. It comes down to the difference between downloading the new Britney Spears album the day its out, or some album that's been sitting around for a year and lingering with six seeds.

 

[JonthanD]

I don't see why people hold so much hatred towards PeerBlock. I've only used it once or twice, whilst downloading from torrents that people said were being watched (and their ISPs were sending them letters, etc).

Of course, I didn't get any letter, nor do I know whether that was due to PeerBlock or not. Odds are, that my ISP would have never sent a letter anyway.

But, considering it's a free program, what's the harm?
I've never heard anybody with a respectable education in networking (unless you guys are) claim that it's a pointless program.
If the program had literally no benefit to anybody, then why is it so popular, and why haven't I heard any criticism beyond GBATemp?

Why the hatin'?

Even if its a thin layer of security, I would take thin over nothing.

 

[ShadowSoldier]

Wow, there was just like 8 posts in a row that had like 200 words too many for me to read.

 

[Originality]

I won't dispute that there are better methods of security for the tech minded individual, but 99% of people utilizing bittorrent are not that tech minded. Whether you want to criticize them for this is up to you but out of the scope of my interest. And I suspect 99% of the complaints against Peerblock really boil down to resenting others for not sharing your habits or feeling the same way you do about IT matters. But anyways...

I should think that if 99% of people utilizing bittorent are not that tech minded, then they should stay way from any unlawful material that might land them a warning from the ISP. If people are going to use bittorent for downloading the unlawfully obtained music/videos/games, they should at least learn how it works or they won't be able to complain when that warning from the ISP comes through the mailbox. "I didn't know" is never a valid excuse.

Then again, if 99% of people using bittorent aren't that tech minded, how many would even know how to use PeerBlock or its kind?

 

[notmeanymore]

Why do people even bother with this sort of software? Say you pirate the movie Inception. You watch it, enjoy it, then delete it. Next week, the feds bust down your door, confiscate your computer and arrest you. (Idk how this would actually work, but lets assume it would go down like this.) They go through your computer, and the movie is nowhere to be found outside of analyzing the "empty" hard drive space which would be a waste of time for something like this.

Even if your ISP or the MPAA has proof that you downloaded it, they can't do anything. These laws are all based on possession. If you have a picture of you smoking weed, the police can't arrest you for having weed, even though they have proof of you having it at one point. Same applies for things like movies, music, etc.

If you want to keep your torrented files in your possession, I'd recommend using TrueCrypt which can hide data on your hard drive and make it appear to be completely random. Even the FBI can't crack TrueCrypt.