Hi!
I was installing a winxp into a mid2007 Macmini, and while checking for firewall applications for it, found info about Peerblock. Digging into it, i found there's a linux application also - peerguardian, but all info seemed to be quite old. My question is: is 'peerguardian' still relevant in 2021? I'm not torrenting, is it still good idea to use it for privacy reasons?

I see it blocks quite a lot of traffic while running, bogons and others, even blocks duckduckgo and linuxquestions. Is the software still relevant today, or did i stumbled into ancient deprecated security practices?

Thanks in-advance to anybody clarifying this a little.

Edit: i also have 'hostsblock' from SBo installed. I would like to minimize unauthorized net traffic from my computer while browsing.

The better question to ask is: Should you run Windows XP in 2021? The answer is a firm "no."

Not running it for anything else than Heroes of might and magic.
Still, need to connect to internet for drivers, etc.

I asked the question about weather it is good practice to run 'peerguardian' on a linux (slackware) desktop machine - my main computer.

Peerguardian is a firewall.

Whether it will work for you or not depends upon how your computer is connected to the internet.

You can use a site that probes your connection for open ports. Eg: https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

The "All service ports" test will reveal any major problems.

Thank's for the link. Tested ok.
I have /etc/hosts blockings, and rc.firewall running on this box.

So you are saying Peerguardian isn't obsolete software or anything? I'm asking, because all articles and forum postings about it, i've found, were from years back.

The Linux version of peerguardian is just a front-end for iptables. It's probably redundant if you have a working rc.firewall.

The Windows version seems quite different, from the descriptions I found on the internet.

Ok, thank you. Good to know.

Found this little article: https://torrentfreak.com/do-p2p-bloc...keep-you-safe/
But, still, from the year 2007.
Ah, peerguardian is 'pgl' in slackbuilds.org

There are many things that have changed since then, including things like the way we connect to the internet. The proliferation of mobile devices and Wifi mean that basically every house has a router now, which usually means access to a hardware firewall. For a home connection, ISPs have been locking them down so that, for example, you can't run a web server at home.

But to answer your question about peerguardian, I think most people would use VPNs to achieve the same result these days, thereby making it redundant.

If you don't want to sign up to a VPN, you can use a hosts block list to achieve a similar result. There are many around and they're regularly updated.