Oz Kudos to PeerGuardian
p2pnet.net News:- PeerGuardian has received a well deserved pat on the back from Australia’s APC Magazine.
Here’s what APC’s Ashton Mills has to say:
While there are as many legitimate uses of P2P software as there are free, community produced, and non-commercial files on the networks there are just as many illegal transfers happening as well. Transfers organisations like the RIAA and MPAA would like to put a stop to. And irrespective of whether such actions are justified, the RIAA litigation engine gets its endless source of defendants to sue by logging the contents of and exploring the systems of those users who run P2P software. It doesn’t matter whether you are or are not sharing copyrighted material, your machine will be logged none the less.
The scary part is, you don’t know just how frequently and from the range of sources prying eyes come knocking until you use a piece of software designed to prevent exactly this sort of eavesdropping.
For Windows there are two popular solutions – the open source Peerguardian and Protowall. Quite literally, these tools are optimised IP filters that can blacklist known abusers. They operate by installing a driver, essentially an IP queue, to filter incoming connections based on regularly updated blacklists.
And there’s an added advantage to using them too. It’s not just the big media magnates and their legions scouring the networks that are a threat, the IP block lists include known spam, phishing, advertising, virus and spyware sources as well.
In other words, it’s healthy for your machine.
p2pnet has been using PG, kicked off by Tim Leonard, almost since Day One. Good on ya, guys : )
[PS - We also use SpyBot Search-and-Destroy.]
Also See:
APC Magazine – HOW TO: Protect your P2P privacy, November 27, 2006
p2pnet newsfeeds for your site.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss
Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
December 1st, 2006 at 7:46 pm
if you think it will save you from copyrightenforcers!
Read why:
http://neuron2neuron.blogspot.com/2006/05/blocklist-balderdash.html
December 1st, 2006 at 7:49 pm
As I’ve mentioned before ( http://p2pnet.net/index.php?page=comment&story=4026&comment=10391 ) please dont just run the list from methlabs/peerguardian, there are other lists out there and I’d suggest that if you’re going to try and be ’safer’ to go all out.
Oh and the program link changed to ( http://www.bluetack.co.uk/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=14 ).
That all said, PG is only a method of stopping the connections to and from your pc to bad ip’s but it does not stop them from knowing your there. For example, if you connect to a torrent – your ip is added to the pool of ip’s shown to be moving a file around, weither they connect to you or not they know your involved in either pulling or pushing the file around.
Same thing with a dc hub or other p2p app, you’re hub or client is still going to be seen – only the connection will be stopped…..
….but… that’s also if they’re ONLY using known ranges and not migrating to using home-user-type ranges. If they’re doing that (and they are) then the ability to stop them from connecting is moot.
It’s an illusion of safety, nothing more.
If you choose to pull or push anything around the net you dont want the world to watch – you need to use a private client like WASTE ( http://waste.sourceforge.net ) and only move files between trusted friends.
Just my 10 cents,
_-Jile-_
December 1st, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Doesn’t peerguardian infringe someone else’s patents?
December 6th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Peer Guardian is fine as a program but the blocklist comes from blutack who are a rude bunch of guys who abuse folks they dont agree with , including adding folks IP’s to the blocklist, something they should censored for.
The main point of why their list is so bloated is that they are quick to block IP’s but it seems they have never heard of dynamic IP allocation and end up blocking thousands of innocent folks from each other with out of date lists, all in all this policy will only end when they run out of IP,s to block.
They are currently blocking 836 million + seperate IP’s.
August 27th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Yes they can obtain your IP but they can not get access to your computer. With no solid evidence your just another random number amongst millions of others. Think of it as a riot, they can only take pictures of who’s involved, they cant record footage of the ones inflicting damage on property.
PG is a progressive protection, brick by brick we are creating an annoying barrier & keep in mind they have to pay for each brick we use. hopefully they will just give up soon but i believe their strategy is to deter potential P2P users not stop it completely.