I was just looking around on different websites for what happened to programs like PeerBlock
Seems like they’re not really too helpful to protect yourself against snitches. But they are helpful for blocking the IP-ranges of advertising companies…
Or use a PiHole, which would work out better than peer block.
Shoutout the PiHole team!
I don’t have the ability to run a PiHole of my own. But I have adguard installed on my PC with its DNS protection set to put my DNS requests through Next DNS and I have my DNS settings changed to put traffic through NextDNS on all of my shit
Why can’t you run a PiHole of your own?
- I don’t know how to set one up
- I already have NextDNS and I can make that work everywhere I go.
- Having AdGuard for windows on both of my laptops and my 3 desktops and my server and my windows tablet already serves the purpose of Pihole plus a few extra things to block the bullshit in windows that PiHole can’t do as effectively
- Updating a Pihole periodically involves buying and configuring a whole new piece of hardware, updating to a new version of AdGuard involves running the installer and sometimes restoring from a settings file or two.
Why two laptops and a windows tablet? One is a beefy gaming laptop, the other is a mediocre laptop that I sometimes take to wifi hotspots. The windows tablet is a different form factor, I don’t really use it much anymore
Two desktops? One for gaming and my daily driver, the other for work.
I’m not telling you what I do for a living.
Ok.
Or, if you’re disinclined to running a Pi-hole yourself, there are services like NextDNS.
Seconded on NextDNS. It’s like $20/year for the “pro” version (no monthly limits) and I honestly cannot recall the last time I saw an ad on any device I control. The sole exception is my Apple TV, where one of the apps I use has ads injected into the video, so, no way to block those.
If advertisers truly cared about serving the customers they claim to care so much about, the ad networks would have better standards and more safeguards to prevent malware. I’d still block them, I just wouldn’t feel the same level of pride in blocking them for both annoyance and safety factors.
I’d be a good start, if content platforms had to apply the same guidelines to ads, as they do to content. It’s kinda telling that people on the platform need to not swear, while the ad below goes “You can’t last 5 seconds in this NFT gambling waifu gatcha collector aimed at teens.” or just offer money freud scams directly.
Yeah. No ads on my regular stuff. My PS4, which I stream with, still gets ads.
Things like PiHole, nextDNS and the desktop versions of adguard only block HTTP, FTP and POP and SMTP connections. It doesn’t block connections to advertising companies through other protocols.
Correct, but what other protocols are they using? When was the last time you had an ad served via FTP?
good point. but there’s still malware C&C servers that can only be blocked by blocking the IP range
Yeah these have basically been ineffective for P2P such as torrenting for many years. The media companies can just outsource their Anti-Sharing campaigns to third parties and it is fairly trivial for them to do discovery from non-obvious or even residential IPs. They just have to open a given torrent long enough to see who is in swarm and start sending nastygrams to those ISPs.
The best way to protect yourself is seedbox/VPS in a jurisdiction with no filesharing enforcement, or at a minimum join a reputable private tracker, because then all participants are vetted and there will never be a snitch in swarm.
Can swarms see your actual IP even behind a VPN?
If you have your VPN client and torrent application set up correctly, your traffic would all be routed through the VPN and the network would see your VPN IP and not the actual IP of your machine. If you have a private tracker you can probably test this on their site as many will show you which IP they see as you seed.
A few considerations with this- Some VPN services do not support or allow torrenting. Also some trackers have issues with you using multiple IPs etc. so your account could be flagged if you have used different VPN nodes over time.
Thanks a bunch!
