peerguardian safety

[insanelyapple]

Im using PG for about 4 months and im shocked how many IPs are blocked while using Torrents.

Anyway, how safe PG is? If an IP is blocked is there still any chance to see how big portion of data im downloading or my pc is fully inaccessible for those "spys"?

[tom01]

False sense of security.

[RAID 0]

I think PG is better than nothing... that is, if you're downloading P2P or torrents.

[insanelyapple]

Hm... afair some people says that hiding behind VPN is better

Ah, thank you tom01 forthis exhausting answew.

Edited August 10, 2009 by Mokusei

[+John Teacake MVC]

Yeah it is a bit. Try Blocklist manager to generate IPFilter.dat and use it with ur torrent client. I found peer guardian unstable on anything other than XP.

[Orien]

It's a false sense of security but better than nothing.

[tom01]

Not really since you can't prove it works.

[RAID 0]

Not really since you can't prove it works.

Show me facts that it does not work.

[Mega Goatlord]

Not really since you can't prove it works.

Can you prove that it doesn't work? It goes both ways. Personally, I prefer just loading blocklists into utorrent, since PG is a mess.

[tom01]

Show me facts that it does not work.

:rolleyes:

Always one.

[Orien]

Not really since you can't prove it works.

If any one (just one) IP on PG's blacklists is one monitoring torrents, then it's better than nothing. Of course I have no proof any IPs on the blacklists are accurate, but chances are one of them is.

[insanelyapple]

so, its rather "preventive medicine" than real protection?

[+Xinok Subscriber²]

This news piece is almost two years old, but I don't think blocklists have improved much since then.

http://www.slyck.com/story1593_MediaDefend...a_Reality_Check

The total number of IPs used by Media Defender starting with 116 was 1,474. Obviously, BlueTack did block all IPs that started with 116, but how many Media Defender IPs were successfully blocked? When Slyck investigated, there was a common theme that blocklists seemingly jumped over several ranges used by Media Defender. After some extensive study using the Level1 list for anti-p2p companies and the 'Paranoid' list, BlueTack would have successfully blocked 16 IPs. Thus, this sample test offered 1.09% protection against Media Defender in that range.

[x9248]

It does block the IP's it says it's blocking. For instance, try to play an online game with PG running. You won't even be able to load into the game unless you whitelist the game servers IP.

Use PeerBlock if you're not on XP, it's exactly the same code as PG but for Vista (and possibly 7, I dunno).

[RAID 0]

:rolleyes:

Always one.

Just as I thought. You can't provide any evidence to backup your statement.

[hsraffety]

peerguardian is fundamentally flawed in the fact that it's blocking IPs that ALREADY HAVE YOUR IP ADDRESS.

There is no legitimate reason for your IP to be sent out as a peer or seed for warez, or any copyrighted material to someone else unless you're actively participating in the download/uploading of the file. if a bad IP connects to you for that file, you're already as good as being gotten. expect a DMCA violation notice.

[+Fulcrum Subscriber¹]

I love how the P2P Allow list comments say

I would say it is rather reliable because it only will contain trusted P2P related IPs. Source

What the heck is a trusted P2P related IP ANYWAY? Not to mention, if you continue reading, you can submit an IP to be trusted too. You just need to request it in the comments; great verification process.

This software is amazing in what it can do, but your security with it depends on a lot of things and from those comments, I don't see it being very safe at all. It is a false sense of security because there is no well-planned process to be on the Trusted List vs the Blocked List.