PeerBlock vs. VPN – Which is Best for Torrenting

pb-vs-vpnIf you are familiar with torrenting activity, you are probably aware that there several ways to protect yourself. Those include PeerBlock and VPNs. Let’s talk about PeerBlock first.

PeerBlock – A firewall program that uses a series of blacklists to prevent a variety of IP addresses from connecting to your computer. Though they can be helpful to avoid detection from the torrent monitoring agencies, there is an issue with the concept. If you do not think that torrent monitoring agencies can get around an IP blacklist, you are wrong. Additionally, the reliability of blacklists to identify correct countries and agencies can also be flawed.

Since you can see there are several issues with blacklists, you better believe that there are definitely some IPs that are missing from the list. Since they are not blocked on by PeerBlock, they can participate in the torrents and see your IP address. Because torrents work off of IP addresses, you are vulnerable and can be identified easily. If you want to keep your PeerBlock up to date, you will need to pay a monthly subscription fee. The alternative to that is to completely uninstall it and re-install it.

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5IPVanish8.873Visit IPVanish

VPN – Using a VPN for torrenting is a better solution for a few different reasons. To begin with, you do not expose your real IP address. if the monitoring agency slides through your IP blacklist, you won’t have to worry about those agencies or anyone else finding out your real IP. Another advantage has to do exposing your IP. You will want to make sure to find a VPN with a “Kill Switch”. Simply put, if your VPN drops its connection, the “Kill Switch” will stop all internet traffic while you reconnect. That will provide you with a way to make sure you are protected, even in the event of a dropped connection. Of course, you will want to use one of the VPN options that we show above. Even though the encryption may slow your download speed to a point, using a fast VPN can help to minimize that effect. To test to make sure that your VPN is working properly, we suggest going to a website such as IPMagnet. That will show you what IP address it sees before you start to expose your IP address to others.

And there you have the advantages of using a VPN over using a blacklisting program like PeerBlock. While you may think that using PeerBlock is a better idea, the truth is that there are too many flaws that can occur when using it or any of the blacklisting programs. That makes them a bad choice over using a VPN. Since both require a monthly fee, the choice is clear.

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