PeerBlock

Anything new on this program. I've been using without issues on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

 

I've tried PeerBlock's "stable" version (1.0.0.r181), the beta (1.0.0.r320), and a portable version, but they all keep crashing.

They work fine for a while, but then an error message starts popping up repeatedly and everything either malfunctions or even crashes unless I'm able to kill peerblock from task manager fast enough. I tried to capture the error message with PrintScreen last time, but one of the malfunctions it caused was that everything I doubleclicked got copied to clipboard so I lost the screen shot. Another time I was running Predator to keep my computer locked while I was out, and I heard the error pop-up message sound as I was about to head out. I tried to log back in (inserted usb, tried password, ...), but PeerBlock had messed up Predator and I couldn't even kill it from task manager. I had to cut power and reboot.

I'm trying Peer Guardian 2 now to see if it's any better.

edit: didn't mean to quote the previous poster [quote removed]

 

I've been trying Peerblock beta version (portable) and so far I've had no issues.

Could it be conflicting with some other application? Have you tried to contact the developer?

I used to have way too many headaches with Peer Guardian, but Peerblock is just great.

See if you can sort it out.

 

The regular programs I have running are Prevx and Online Armor (free versions of each), Rollback Rx, eboostr 4 (extra caching), CleanMem every 30 min, autohotkey script with a bunch of custom hotkeys (nothing that should conflict with anything), USB Drive Letter Manager, USB Safely Remove, and often firefox preloader and start menu 7. The crashes usually happened when other programs were also in use, but mostly different ones. For example, once it happened while I was using VMware Workstation, another time with BaKoMa TeX (for writing pdfs in latex), once with predator, and the last time it happened as I was watching an avi-file on GOM Player....

I meant to capture those error pop-ups to send the developer, but I kept either forgetting as my first instinct was to kill the app before it killed my computer, or I remembered but had a problem with screen capture because of the malfunction.

If peer guardian 2 doesn't work either, then I'll try the portable version of the PeerBlock beta release and I'll try to capture those error messages to send the developer.

 

Snake oil. 100% snake oil. Guaranteed.

SCNR.

 

Snake oil is expensive, CleanMem is free. Besides, the original snake oil probably did offer pain relief as advertised (and other benefits related to omega-3 fatty acids). It was the fake knockoffs that ruined its reputation.

 

I installed PeerBlock v1.0.0.181 on a different computer with different av and firewall, but got the same error, and this time I captured the attached screenshot. I'll see if Peer Guardian works any better on this computer.

p.s. I think my internet connection died with the crash so Phoenix Labs probably didn't receive the report.

 

The best thing to do would be to report it to the guys at PeerBlock, so they can look into it and help you out, there will never be any more updates to PeerGuardian.

I hope no one minds me responding to this particular comment here in the Peerblock thread, sorry it's a bit late.

That's interesting. Which blocklist authors were responsible for that reply and where did they say that ?

Shared server IP's have always been a problem and I can say that we make splits whenever possible to try and avoid innocent suffering.

In the past at BISS we had some very heavy handed blocklist contributors who sometimes went a bit overboard. We do try to keep things in perspective when it comes to blocking full ranges that can affect more than what is needed. It all depends on who makes the decision I guess.

You could always help these poor misguided people by reporting those ranges that you find are mis-labelled and outdated.

I always found the IP blocklist from Donna / CoU to be well maintained and it only targets malware threats. CoU don't just throw in anything old thing that they find.

Not every blocklist format has comments at the start.

You are quite free to choose a different firewall and format to use if you aren't happy.. The Blocklist Manager supports over 20 different blocklist format conversions, we have no absolutely no control over what formats firewall developers choose to use in their own programs.

Nothing lasts forever, you may get your wish.. How many more formats do you really need ?

At Bluetack we don't make any money from this stuff, we do ask for donations to help pay for the servers. For the past 7 years everything we make, such as the Blocklist Manager, Online Blocklist Converter, Protowall, Hosts file manager and all blocklist updates have been offered for free.

As a free resource we don't have any control over who uses our lists or programs and we sure didn't force anyone to use them.

It's a fair comment and I agree some things could be better.

We do our best to manage over 4 billion IPv4 IP's with a couple of people who also have day jobs and real lives and still handle the abuse that goes with it. If there were more people who got involved in IP research instead of just complaining but doing nothing about it, things might be very different.

I don't know how anyone is going to be able to properly handle maintaining IPv6 blocklists

Over the years community support to help maintain the blocklists has fluctuated and as far as I know there aren't too many people still actively working on keeping ranges up to date. The combined efforts of IPfilterx, BISS and TBG probably make up around 10 people.

It seems Fakhir decided to try and profit off the work of other people by building his site and mirroring various block lists without permission, then picking out ranges he thought would sell and put them in another list with a new name that only his subscribers can access.

I don't think Fakhir actually ever contribute anything back to Bluetack or IPfilterX who work on some of those the lists he uses on his site. He provides hosting for the TBG lists, which is nice of him.

Any IP's in the subscribers list can be found for free if you just look for them, most people don't want to do the work themselves or don't know how. Maybe that special knowledge is worth something, since people are obviously prepared to pay for it.

Congrats to the guys at Peerblock for taking up the challenge and helping people to protect their pc's. Peerblock doesn't just have to be used for P2P purposes, and you don't have to use anyone else's blocklists, you can make your own. There are very few options available to protect users with such power that you can get for free, with quality support. Peerblock is a very effective tool against any kind of internet threat that can be identified by an IP address.

 

For myself BISS is worth its wieght in gold, and to the person who said I hope BISS wither and die well mate I can smell you from here.

 

moore, I'm relieved to hear that you're not involved with Fakhir's monetization agenda.

re: inappropriate blocking
You ask "where did you hear that?"

My post you quoted is #71 in this thread. Scroll up one post, to #70.
I filled in additional info regarding what Subset had mentioned:
TallEmu (OnlineArmor) wound up being blocked, simply because their domain website is hosted by CalPop (a hosting provider which is owned by Hollywood Interactive).

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=peerblock tallemu

The example isn't an isolated incident. Countless other innocents (domain owners) are hosted by operators whose servers are racked in datacenters owned by Time Warner Communication. By blocking all "Time Warner IP netblocks", the blocklist maintainers are causing as much harm as good (probably more harm, actually). One high-profile example from my November research was this: Several open source projects, including Pidgin, ImageMagick, SimpleMachines etc are "victims" of the blocklist... because they are hosted by www.networkredux.com which operates from a TimeWarner -owned datacenter.

Also (again, based on what I found back in November) quite a few of the netblocks appearing in the blocklist which are "attributed to" China... are not. IMO, a blocklist maintainer's failure to utilize current ip2country data is gross negligence.

 

No one forces you to use xyz blocklist. The lists exist to whom wants to make use of them. If some IP is being blocked and you want access, here are your options:

- Don't make use of such list;
- Allow the IP for the amount of time you want or permanently.

Easy as that.

 

For those of you who would like: http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/iplist.php?ipformat=peerblock

It will block ads.

 

Norton DNS reports the site has an infected file (hxxp://pgl.yoyo.org/sircam/Shingles_17.doc).

http://i48.tinypic.com/30t2b1l.png

 

runs good. But blocks legitimate sites sometimes.

 

This is our latest Beta Release, released June 9, 2010.

What's New in PeerBlock 1.0+ (r404):

Here are the major changes since the most recent Beta Release, r320:

• Better "Last Updated" handling for list-update checking - Many users have been experiencing problems with updated lists not being detected, after iblocklist.com's change to start reporting actual last-modified timestamps. We should now be correctly catching updated lists.
• Updated History Setting Defaults - Changed the defaults for History settings to "Remove every 7 days" and Max Size = 100 MB. If your settings have these left at the old defaults, PeerBlock will pop up a window during your first run that advises you that it's making these changes. This should help prevent problems with history.db becoming corrupted and/or growing to an absurd size.
• Changed Systray-icon Left-click Handling - New behavior: If the window is minimized, restore it. If the window is at all hidden by other windows, bring it to top. If window is already at top, minimize it.
• Changed "Allow HTTP for X min" Visible Handling - If you select the "Allow HTTP for X min" option in the right-click menu, that option will now be highlighted. Previously, it would highlight the "Allow HTTP" button. Also note that transitioning from one Allow HTTP state to another will not start Blocking HTTP, only clicking a currently-selected Allow HTTP option will restart HTTP Blocking.
• New Manually-settable Options - Added two options to the peerblock.conf config-file, for people who don't like some of the new features we've added during our Beta period. "ListSanityChecking" lets you disable the List-add Sanity-checking (for dupes, non-iblocklist URLs, etc.) by setting it to "no"; "WarningIconForHttpAllow" lets you make it so that we will not change to a yellow "warning" icon if you're Allowing HTTP, if you set it to "no".
• New Splashscreen and Installer Pic - These have been updated with some new images sent in by the new Graphics Guy on our team, Mourad.
  Additional minor changes can be found on the r404 Changes page.

 

If you view this page:

- http://pgl.yoyo.org/sircam/

You can see where those files come from. My site hasn't been infected, and I wouldn't expect anyone to ever actually download those files.

Hi sg09! I would very much like to know which legitimate sites are being blocked! I am generally very careful to only add sites and domains which are dedicated servers (see here for the full policy: http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/policy.php), and will look into any reports of false positives. Please feel free to mail me at pgl@yoyo.org with any information about this. Thanks!

 

Ok, I will mail you about false positives.

 

I saw that there is an available blocklist for ads. Is this list updated frequently? Another question, is peerblock compatible with 64bit windows 7?

 

@pajenn

googling peerblock+sql error = log none in settings

seems its a known problem

 

For example why it blocks McAfee homepage?
http://www.mcafee.com/
Also Norton Webpage
http://www.symantec.com/
CA websites
http://www.ca.com/in/
Norman
http://www.norman.com/

 

Also blocked Sunbelt
http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/

 

I dropped Norton DNS because it is too aggressive. It wouldn't allow access to anything on your domain. Sorry if what I posted was viewed in any way as a negative opinion of your site.

 

If you're referring to my list (on pgl.yoyo.org), then, yes, it's updated regularly.

If you mean my list - I don't see how it could!

[jemgl]:~ $ host www.mcafee.com
www.mcafee.com has address 216.49.88.12

(pgl@db.yoyo.org) [db: pgl]> select * from adserver_ips where ip = '216.49.88.12';
Empty set (0.01 sec)
​

ie, mcafee's website's IP address isn't listed. This is the same for all the others except for www.symantec.com.

www.symantec.com could be a problem though, because the IP maps back to a568.d.akamai.net, which is used by a variety of sites (actually, 84 of the ones I have listed) as well as symantec.com. In this case, I don't know what to say other than, maybe not use my list in its IP form. It is primarily intended for blocking ads via DNS rather than IP addresses; I made the IP list available because, well, it might be useful to someone (that's the only reason I put the list up in the first place!).

Sorry. Is there any way you can whitelist certain IPs?

Aw, I didn't take it that way at all! I have to say that blocking my whole domain because of an infected Word doc does see overly aggressive, though!

 

But McAfee is blocked still now. The ip is 208.69.152.106

It also blocked Zone Alerm website.

Sorry I can't get you...

 

You can add IP addresses to a whitelist in PeerBlock so that it will ignore these IP addresses in its blocklists. The easiest way is through the log in the main window.


EDIT: My screenshot is of PeerGuardian, but PeerBlock should look very similar.