For those that aren't familiar with, here's a quick introduction: Peerblock is free software that is often used by p2p and bittorrent users for the intended purpose of making their downloads more 'anonymous' by blocking peer connections from certain IP addresses. Peerblock allows users to choose from 3rd party 'blocklists' (some are free and some are available for purchase) which are essentially huge databases of IP addresses that will be blocked when Peerblock is activated. In theory, this concept is intriguing.

The idea is that if you can identify specific 'undesirable' IP addresses, which may be belong perhaps to malicious users, governments, or monitoring agencies who may sell bittorrent data to the highest bidder, you can block these connections, thereby making downloading torrents 'safer.' It turns out there are a number of problems with this approach: #1 - Peerblock blocks way too may peers. If you use the freely available for Peerguard, you would probably think that they would combine for a few thousand, maybe 10 thousand IP addresses blocked. In reality, just the top 3 blocklists combined list over 1.1 Billion IP addresses.

I've recently received a notification (as well as a hold on my internet access) from my internet provider on my individual account I had to create. Jul 31, 2017 Recently I tried to update peerblock and started to receive. That new IP would be added to the list in a week or so. There are many Peerblock alternatives. I've read in the peerblock forums an interesting yet foolish way to use it. That person blocked all ip ranges ( Friday Night Lights S04e07 on this page. 0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255) and specifically allow ip.

That's over 25% of all available IPv4 addresses on earth! Obviously not all of these peers (not even close to the majority) are actually malicious or undesirable. The result is that since you have far fewer peers to choose from, your download speeds may be much slower when using Peerblock. #2 - It's impossible to block all malicious IP addresses.

Peerblock lists are made by blocking IP ranges of different types. Some IP ranges belong to research institutions, some to the government, etc. The truth is though, that the only way to block every malicious peer is to block every single IP address on earth (then you'd have zero peers). Any person or organization that is determined to monitor your torrent activity is not going to be deterred by the fact that their IP address got blocked. There are companies who's entire income depends on their ability to log the IP addresses. It's not as if they'll go out of business just because their IP address got blocked. The truth is it's incredibly easy to change IP addresses.

By using a VPN service like, a monitoring agency can have 10's of thousands of IP addresses available at a single click. Even if you use a blocklist that blocks the IP ranges of popular VPN providers, a monitoring company could still create their own IP switching service by renting a VPS for under $100 a month. If their new IP's get blocked, they can just move the entire system to a new server with a new set of IP addresses with relatively little trouble. The bottom line is that it's absolute impossible to block every IP address that monitors torrent activity. Peerblock doesn't encrypt your Data.

Even if Peerblock theoretically could block every malicious peer's IP address, there's one monitoring agency that it can't block. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP). SInce all of your internet traffic is routed through your ISP's servers, they have full access to your data stream. Your ISP can see what websites your visiting, what protocols you're using (like BitTorrent) and what files you're downloading by using a technique known as. There is a relatively simple solution to block deep packet inspection however.