With a blocklist, you can find out what IP addresses should be blocked when you are torrenting. In general, blocklists include IP addresses of known malware and eavesdroppers, but they don’ offer a complete protection against eavesdroppers. It is possible to find IP lists that are organized according to different categories and they include countries, as well as organizations that carry out online monitoring. The issue with blacklists is that they don’t provide reliable information. In some cases, the IP addresses listed are not even used by the agencies they are meant to belong to. Given that IP addresses are constantly changing, not all the information about the IP addresses that are listed is accurate. There may be mistakes regarding the country or who the IP is associated with. In addition, many IP addresses that should be included in the list are not there
Blocklists don’t offer a good level of privacy, but they may be practical in some cases. Good quality bitTorrent clients such as uTorrent and Transmission feature support for blocklists. One of the options available is I-Blocklist, which offers a good selection of blocklists, although many of them require a subscription. One of the free options available is Wael.Name, but it has annoying pop-ups.
PeerBlock is another blacklisting system and it works with lists from IBlocklist.com. This is a firewall application that is used by many people while torrenting and it is designed to prevent some IP addresses from accessing your computer. Peerblock’s IP blacklists and it is meant to block monitoring agencies that are trying to see what you are up to. It denies access to your computer so monitoring agencies won’t be able to see that you are part of a torrent swarm. The problem is that as we previously mentioned, IP blacklisting is not the best option to protect you from monitoring, because it is doesn’t use accurate data. Agencies that are dedicated to monitor torrent traffic to look for copyright violations are likely to be able to bypass IP blocklists easily.
How to add multiple blocklists to Transmission
1. Copy the URL of the the blocklist
2. Open Transmission, select preferences and then peers
3. Paste the URL into the URL bar and select “Update”. You will see the download.
4. Click Go and then Go to folder on Mac finder bar. Enter ” ~/Library/Application Support/Transmission
5. Select the blocklist folder. You will see that there is only one “blocklist.bin” folder. This is the blocklist of the current URL that you entered in Transmission. By default, Transmission makes this file the generic URL updated .bin file. Unless you want to have only one blocklist, this is not practical.
6. Click and drag the blocklist out of the folder and move it to your desktop. You can rename it like this “(the name of your choice) blocklist.bin”.
7. Follow the same process fro the other blocklist URLs you want to use from the website. Whenever you finish with the URLs you use, close Transmission.
8. Once you have completed this for all the blocklists you want to use (make sure that you use a different name before “-blocklist.bin”), go back to the blocklist folder.
9. Click and drag reach file that you renamed back into the folder.
7. Follow the same process fro the other blocklist URLs you want to use from the website. Whenever you finish with the URLs you use, close Transmission.
8. Once you have completed this for all the blocklists you want to use (make sure that you use a different name before “-blocklist.bin”), go back to the blocklist folder.
9. Click and drag reach file that you renamed back into the folder.
10. Open Transmission, select “window”, then select message log and click on the bottom left of the window. Instead of “error” or “debug”, select “info” and check the status of your peer block list. On the right-hand side, you should see information about the blocklists added.
The best alternative for privacy – Use a VPN
Although Blocklists sound like a simple solution to prevent monitoring agencies from seeing what you do online, they are not the best option to protect your privacy. As previously mentioned, they are not always precise and it is likely that some of the information they feature is not up to date. This is why, the best option is to use a VPN service to ensure that your privacy is protected when you are torrenting. A VPN does more than simply blocking certain IP addresses. It changes your IP address, making it very difficult for others to trace you. In addition, it encrypts your internet traffic, so your activities will remain private.
There are hundreds of VPN services available, but in order to get the best possible security and performance, you should opt for a reliable service like ExpressVPN, NordVPN or Private Internet Access. These providers are known for offering a high standard of security and they have excellent track record in terms of privacy. They don’t keep logs of your internet traffic, meaning that even if they are approached by monitoring agencies or authorities asking for information, they won’t be anything incriminating that they could hand over. The fast speeds that these providers will allow you to download content without annoying delays. VPNs are ideal for torrenting as they provide the level of security needed to keep your identity protected.