Written in C++ Available in English | Operating system | |
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Developer(s) Mark Bulas – Lead Developer
night_stalker_z – Developer
XhmikosR – Developer Initial release September 27, 2009; 7 years ago (2009-09-27) Stable release 1.2 / January 14, 2014; 3 years ago (2014-01-14) | ||
PeerBlock is a free and open-source personal firewall. PeerBlock is the Windows successor to PeerGuardian (which is only actively maintained in Linux). It blocks incoming and outgoing connections to Internet IP addresses that are included on blacklists accessible over the Internet which may be selected by the user, and to addresses specified by the user. PeerBlock mainly uses blocklists provided by iblocklist.com. The aim of its use is to prevent certain (blacklisted) IP peers in a torrent download from verifying your own peer download connection. While the software is free, a subscription must be paid for access to lists of sites to block.
Contents
Development
PeerBlock 1.0 is based on the same code as PeerGuardian 2 RC1 Test3 Vista version. It adds support for 32- and 64-bit Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8. When the PeerGuardian project ended, its developer Phoenix Labs encouraged current PeerGuardian users to migrate to PeerBlock.
PeerBlock is under development by a small team of developers led by Mark Bulas. Hosting, as well as the signed driver, is funded by donations from the public. Future donations are intended to contribute to future signed drivers, hosting and to possibly rent a virtual private server on which the team should be able to build a "real" online-update feature for future releases of PeerBlock.
Features
PeerBlock has multiple features in the latest version of the program. These include a constantly updating blocklist managed by the home site and a manager that lets you choose which lists to include in the block. The program allows for a user to turn on and off both IP and HTTP trackers as well as including a log showing the time, source, IP address, destination, and protocol of the tracker. A list of settings allows users to both customize their program's interface as well as its operations.
Until September 2013, I-Blocklist, the supplier of the blocking lists PeerBlock uses, supported unlimited free list updating. Since September 2013 updates were limited to once weekly, except to paid subscribers. PeerBlock is hard-coded to use I-Blocklist lists and has entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with I-Blocklist. In late 2015 blocklists were no longer available without payment of a subscription.