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New PeerBlock Beta Released After More Than Two Years Without Updates


Matsuda

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PeerBlock is a free software for Windows that aims to block connections to select servers on the Internet by default to improve a user's privacy and security. It is a list-based software much like those that ad blockers use, but with the difference that you can block corporations, governments, or the media industry using it. Unlike browser extensions, it blocks traffic on the whole system though.
It is based on PeerGuardian code, and considered to be the official successor of the application for the Windows platform. PeerGuardian itself is still developed actively for Linux. The PeerBlock project went dark about two years ago and it was not really clear if the project was still alive or not

While there were signs that it was not completely abandoned, occasional blog posts for instance, no new version of the program was released by the developers in that time.

This changed a couple of days ago when beta version r677 of PeerBlock 1.1 was released to the official site. The release highlights the development is still ongoing. The application itself made a big jump from the last beta release, r484 to this one introducing several major changes and improvements to it in the process.

  • The Port Settings page enables you to unblock ports that you want to allow. This can be very useful if you notice that connections to select ports are blocked while you need to use them. Several default ports (80,443 for web traffic, 21 for FTP, 25 for SMTP and 110 for POP3) are displayed directly, and you can add other ports manually using the add dialog.

port-settings.jpg

  • Settings are now displayed in tabs in the main interface, instead of on a single page with next and prev buttons.
  • Users with I-Blocklist subscriptions can add their username and pin under Settings 1 now to integrate the service directly into PeerBlock.
  • Error messages and handling has been improved in regards to I-Blocklist (which hosts the majority of lists that people use according to the developers).
  • Windows 2000 support has been removed.
  • Official support for Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.

A wizard walks you through the initial configuration. You can subscribe to one or multiple lists -- P2P, Ads, Spyware and Educational are available, as well as options to import existing lists --and configure the app to allow http traffic through all the time. Additional lists can be downloaded from I-Blocklist for example.

You are then asked to define how often you want the program to check for updates, and whether you want that to include the program and the lists you are subscribed to, or only one of them.

Once you are done, the program will start to work silently in the background for the most part. You can monitor what is being blocked though in the main interface, and may need to open the application occasionally if you notice that something is not working right anymore after installation of PeerBlock

PeerBlock 1.1+ (r677) Installer - for Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8 (all editions)





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Edited by Matsuda
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This makes me VERY happy. So glad to see they made a new one...I recall about a year ago or longer, PeerBlock announced that they would create a new version of their program but never did...it made me question what happened.

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ironic this, up till last week i used peerblock for several years, got fed up with no updates so i deleted it, now this arrives :) will be reinstalling.

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ironic this, up till last week i used peerblock for several years, got fed up with no updates so i deleted it, now this arrives :) will be reinstalling.

What screwed up logic is that?

You uninstalled it because there were no program updates, It still updated IP lists so what logic were you using when you decided to uninstall it?

You sir are strange.

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The GUI updates are really nice, namly the settings. I do have an i-blocklist subscription but I'm not sure how it incorporates into things. I see the spot for my username & PIN (which was auto filed correctly after install), but it all worked fine before without those options there. So what exactly is it there for?

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I hope the next release will not take that long... :lol:

thats depend of people who help with the Project, for example if you are a developer/programer, then your should already be helping in development there.

Edited by SPECTRUM
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PeerBlock Beta Release 1.1+ (r677)



Port Allow List - The new "Port Settings" tab allows you to unblock ports (incoming and/or outgoing). This means that PeerBlock will not filter any connections from/to those ports. This can for example be used if you're running PeerBlock on a public FTP server, or if you want to ensure that outgoing SMTP mail communications are never blocked. Many thanks to night_stalker_z for his hard work on this feature!

Separate Settings Tabs - Instead of having one Settings tab with those silly "Next" and "Prev" buttons on it, we've broken that out into two separate "Settings 1" and "Settings 2" tabs.

I-Blocklist Subscription Settings - To make it easier for you to configure PeerBlock to use an I-Blocklist Subscription, new I-Blocklist Username/PIN fields have been added to the bottom of the "Settings 1" tab.

Improved List-Update Error Handling - We've worked with I-Blocklist, who hosts the vast majority of the lists people use, to create improved error messaging for the various problems that may occur when updating lists. If something occurs during update-checking, the error message displayed should be much more meaningful.

Removal of Windows 2000 Support - Windows 2000 is quite old by now, we hope that nobody's still running it; if you are, you can continue using the previous PeerBlock version. This release does support all Windows variants from Windows XP through to Windows 8.1, including server variants. (But not Windows RT.)

Updated Error Windows - If you encounter a catastrophic error, the message that appears will now tell you to go visit peerblock.com/errors. This will redirect you to a forum-post on which the most common error-messages are displayed, to help you figure out what has gone wrong, and what can be done to fix it.



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