Among the many torrenters worldwide, these individuals turned to PeerBlock to hide their identity when file sharing.
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A lot of the popularity was down to the fact, and it was open source and, above all, free.
However, things change, and this software isn’t delivering as intended, and people were finding they were in a false sense of security.
We will look at this IP blocking program and see how it stacks up against a VPN. By the end of this article, you will see if PeerBlock is worth using or not.
What is PeerBlock?
How PeerBlock works is by allowing torrent users to choose third-party blocklists, some of which are free, and some come with a purchase cost.
These are massive databases of IP addresses which the service blocks once a user activates PeerBlock on a device.
While the concept may sound appealing, you can block a dangerous IP, no matter if it is from a government, a monitoring agency, or other malicious users.
This, in theory, will make the downloading of torrents safer. However, theory differs greatly from reality, and there are huge flaws in the concept of this IP blocker.
Does PeerBlock Work?
Now, this is debatable. While you can add a list of blocked IP addresses, you have no way of knowing what it incorporates, so you can find you lose access to some sites you may visit.
You could also find you block an entire region without knowing. These are two examples, but here are other things to consider. After this, you can make up your own mind if PeerBlock works or if it doesn’t.
Blocks too many peers
There are many PeerBlock lists you can choose from. If you took the three most common, you might think you are blocking a few thousand or tens of thousands of IPs.
The top 3 block-lists accounts for over 25% of the IPv4 IPs in the world. This equates to over 1-billion.
There is no way that all of these are monitoring agencies, and there will be a likely chance you will block access to something you used to visit.
Malicious IP’s
The list of IP addresses that PeerBlock delivers blocks IP ranges of specific types.
These can belong to research institutions, known government IP, and many others. While some may be useful in blocking, it’s impossible to block all the ones you want to make your connection safe.
The only way you could do this is to block every single IP, and then you’d have no internet connection.
The agencies who monitor the internet are expecting something to block their IP, so there is no way this will prevent them from doing their job.
They will be geared up to change their IP as quickly as possible.
Encryption
While PeerBlock may block unwanted IPs, it doesn’t actually mask your IP from your ISP. They can still see your network activity and will keep this data.
Depending on your region, someone can make this available to governments or monitoring agencies.
All you have to do is think of the 5-eyes and the NSA. Then you can see who may ask for user data.
Hiding Your IP-Address
When you are a part of a torrent swarm, your IP is visible. PeerBlock can’t do anything to change this.
Your internet service provider will see this as clear as anyone else who wants to look.
As you can see from these few things here, a PeerBlock download works in one way, but it does nothing for your online security.
With this, you will need a PeerBlock alternative. Users may think a paid-for option that is similar is better. The BeeThink IP blocker?
Sadly, this doesn’t cut it either, as it works in the same way. It hasn’t been updated in the past 2-years, so much has changed in this time.
Torrent Anonymously With a PeerBlock Alternative
There is only one way to download torrents anonymously. This is to use a VPN service. The large numbers of users who chose PeerBlock did so because it was free, it will be clear, they will look for a cheap VPN.
Unfortunately, a cheap service won’t deliver full anonymity, just like a free VPN won’t. These come with limitations on bandwidth, and they can be more harmful as they are used as a marketing ploy.
Users have their data harvested by their VPN, then use it or sell it for targeted ads.
You may ask, “Why to use a VPN at all?”
The answer to this is simple and also tenfold. A VPN service encrypts device connections.
As soon as any data leaves your device or system, it will be encrypted by military-grade encryption, and it will reach its destination using the most secure protocols.
These are the same as what banks and the NSA use. If it works for them, it will work for a torrent downloader. Once you connect, it masks your real IP address, so even your ISP won’t know what you are doing.
Not only this, but another advanced feature the best VPN delivers is a kill switch. As soon as you lose your VPN connection (it can happen), your IP is again visible. These kill switches do terminate all programs that connect to the internet if your VPN goes down.
This feature is just one that prevents DNS leaks, but not all VPNs can do this. ExpressVPN performs this job admirably and has one of the more robust VPN networks; downtime is minimal, so kill switches are there as a backup rather than a necessity.
It also delivers the fastest download speeds for torrenting and streaming on its optimized servers.
The feature list is endless, and no matter what features you compare against others, this VPN will come out on top.
To torrent safely or use Kodi for streaming, there are no other PeerBlock alternatives that come close.
