Peerblock vs VPN – What’s The Difference? What’s Best For Torrenting?
Over the years, peer to peer (P2P) sites have become popular among internet users who want to download media files from the internet. P2P sites mostly comprise of torrenting sites where you can download anything from movies, eBooks, games, music, videos, TV shows and more.
Torrenting uses P2P connections where a huge amount of data is transferred between many computers within the P2P network. This exchange of data exposes your computer to external attacks, and for this reason, you want to protect your files and information.
Peerblock and VPNs are some of the most used safety & privacy features of protecting your privacy while torrenting. These two features use different methods to protect your information and files while torrenting.
It is for that reason we created this guide to familiarize you with Peerblock and VPNs to help you determine which technology suits you best.
What’s Peerblock? How does it work?
If you are a heavy internet user, the chances are that you’ve come across the phrase Virtual Private Networks (VPN) but are less familiar with Peerblock. Peerblock is popular among people who do heavy torrenting.
As its name suggests, Peerblock is a computer application creates a firewall that blocks other users, governments, organizations, and copyright authorities from accessing your computer while torrenting.
The Peerblock firewall keeps other users from accessing your information and prevents governments and other authoritative organizations from limiting the files you want to download from torrenting sites.
How does Peerblock work?
Well, Peerblock operates simply. Once you’ve installed the program, all you need to do is add the IP addresses you don’t want to connect to your computer.
Once you’ve blacklisted the IP addresses, Peerblock creates a firewall that prevents/completely cuts out communication between your machine and the blacklisted machines.
What’s VPN? How Is IT Different from Peerblock?
VPN works by creating a private network within a public network to provide a secure line of communication between a network of computers. VPNs promote privacy and security for its users when browsing unsecured sites and using public Wi-Fi.
When it comes to safety and privacy, VPNs are rated above other safety technologies such as proxies, Tor, SOCKS5 and even Peerblock. This is because VPN networks feature IPSec and OpenVPN encryption protocols.
These protocols encrypt all data passing through your computer with 128-bit AES and 256-bit AES encryption respectively to provide maximum privacy and safety to users. For this reason, VPNs have become the top priority security feature for governments, corporates, and even military use.
How does VPN differ from Peerblock?
There are many ways in which VPN differs from Peerblock. For starters, unlike VPN, Peerblock is optimized for providing security to users while torrenting. But this is not to say that VPN cannot be used to protect your information while torrenting; VPN just provides a more general protection while online.
Another telling difference is how both security features operate. For Peerblock, it works by locking out the IP addresses you have blacklisted while VPN provides a range of capabilities. VPN works by encrypting your data and provides a host of other capabilities such as hiding unblocking geo-restricted content online, speeding up connection and hiding your IP address.
Peerblock Vs. VPN? Why You Should Use A VPN Instead of Peerblock
As stated earlier, VPN allows many functionalities over Peerblock, and for this reason, we believe you should use VPN over Peerblock. The best way to implement this plan is by going online and researching a VPN service provider you can trust.
Once you’ve subscribed to a trusted VPN service, your computer’s IP address will be masked and be directed through different servers across the world to prevent tracking modules to record your online activities.
When it comes to costs and charges, both of these security features receive bonus points for their free service. Nowadays, everyone wants their own private VPN network. The high demand for VPNs in the past few years has resulted in market growth in the industry, and now you’ll find that most VPN service providers offer free VPN services for clients.
The high demand for VPNs has also resulted to more VPN services provider. With so many providers, it becomes incredibly hard to distinguish legitimate service providers from scammers. As a result, more and more people are complaining that their VPN providers are stealing or accessing their personal information.
That said, if you can find a legitimate VPN service provider such as Betternet, their service is well worth it, especially if you upgrade to their premium package where you will get all the cool perks of VPNs.
How Peerblock Works When Used For Torrenting
As stated earlier, Peerblock works by blacklisting unwanted IP addresses to keep them from communicating with your computer. This method is effective at locking out certain IP addresses but also leaves your computer open from other types of attacks. Here are some of Peerblock’s weaknesses/limitations:
1. A good privacy and security system protects you from all kinds of threats, both the known and unknown. This is where Peerblock fails spectacularly because as far as threats go, Peerblock can only protect you from threats you have blacklisted. With Peerblock, potential threats can attack your computer and steal your information.
2. When Peerblock blacklists unwanted IP addresses, it does not hide or mask your IP address making it easy for determined individuals to attack you from other computers.
3. Peerblock’s security measure can easily be bypassed by getting a new IP address that is not on your blocklist.
4. Unlike VPN, Peerblock does not offer any form of data encryption. This means that all your online activity can be monitored by your ISP.
Why is VPN a better solution?
In this section, we are going to categorize some of the major online security concerns and determine which security feature between VPN and Peerblock is superior in each category.
- Blocking Unsafe IPs?
Here, Peerblock is more superior at blocking unsafe IPs as this is its main functionality. You can almost be sure that Peerblock will give access to some malicious IPs, but you can at least reduce/limit this number.On the other hand, VPNs don’t give you the function of blocking IPs.
- Better At Hiding Your Address?
Hiding/masking IPs is one of the many notable capabilities of VPNs. Peerblock does not provide a feature where you can hide your IP.For this category, VPN is superior as it provides you with more privacy and anonymity online.
- Which Keeps You safer While Torrenting
The fact that you can mask your IP address using VPN gives you more privacy when torrenting and makes it much more difficult for malicious malware to track your browsing history.On the other hand, Peerblock blocks IP addresses to prevent malicious spyware and modules from accessing your computer and recording your browsing activity.
As you can see, both safety features use different technologies to keep out harmful/malicious threats.
Unfortunately, it is hard to generalize and claim a winner in this category. Both methods have their strengths and limitations, and you can only determine a winner when you subject both technologies to individual tasks. Therefore, in this category, it is a tie for VPN and Peerblock.
- Which Security Feature Offers More Uses?
It goes without saying that VPN is the winner in this category. With VPN, not only can you mask your IP but you can also encrypt your data and access geo-restricted content. With Peerblock, you cannot access these features. The only thing a VPN cannot do is block IP addresses.
VPN or PEERBLOCK? Should You Use Both?
If you don’t want to compromise your safety while online, you can use both safety features at the same time. However, if you just want to block certain IPs from your computer, Peerblock will suffice.
Similarly, if you constantly visit unsecured sites or use public Wi-Fi, VPN is the ideal choice for privacy. Needless to say, if you’re caught up in both situations, you can use both features for their specialized safety functionalities.
Conclusion: Peerblock vs. VPN | What’s Best?
Having familiarized yourself with VPN and Peerblock, it is extremely difficult to declare a winner. This is because both features offer different protection levels and are designed for completely different security concerns.
Without torrenting, it is hard to envisage a world where Peerblock would be useful. You see, Peerblock was developed specifically to keep out unwanted IPs off your computer when torrenting.
On the other hand, it is also hard to ignore the multi-capability purpose of VPN services. Unlike Peerblock, VPNs are not one-dimensional and can protect you from various online threats. For this reason, we declare VPN as the better security choice.