Folks before you start that 'rolls eyes' at more rhetoric, please just try to understand we have prided ourselves here on giving folks honest answers and technical advice. I don't care about the politics I do care however about users being lied to, and this is for information purposes only.
Recently Gemini777 of the Pie team made a huge post about Peerguardian and why all users should be using it, conflicting with information they have had from us telling them NOT to use it. They have even gone to the trouble of spamming peoples emails and chat rooms with this 'announcement'. Asking users to remove the only list from it that was actually offering them any real protection!
These people are praying on innocent users that don't know any better and are giving advice that is going to make their use of WinMX a nightmare. I have offered untold times to help them make their own blocklists, and have offered them free use or our blocklist since day one. Why would I do that? Because the flooding they allow onto this network with their ridiculous claims and advice effects us all. Because I care about the users and how their time on WinMX goes.
Now pie are asking you to remove it, use PG2 (which only works blocking RIAA as well as it does because up until now they have had access to steal the IPs that the WMW team work hard to get, adding them to their block lists NEVER to be removed, causing more and more regular users to be blocked permanently) and its not only taking advantage of WMW, WMG, and our block team, Pie's lies and mistruths and BS is taking advantage of the users.
Peerguardian the Facts:
1. For primary connections: It helps block several types of Dos/DDoS attacks on the WinMX network - please note that ALL primary connections can be used for this purpose without their knowledge if they are NOT running PG2 with the recommended lists for WinMX.
False:
PG2 with it's default lists does block millions and millions of IPs and because of this the industry knows a great little trick that using PG2 or ProtoWall helps to facilitate. It helps them complete a DDOS attack on you by PG2 being tied up and your sockets being blocked. Thus, causing the use of PG2 to knock you offline and make your entire internet connection unstable.
Allow these floods of UDP and you will hardly notice if you have PG2 disabled. Remember Gem states above '
without your knowledge', meaning if you didn't use PG2 you would
never notice them.
Don't believe me, try it! Run for a few days with it disabled and see if your connection is not more stable.
2. For primary connections: It blocks known fake file flooders from appearing in your searches and also for the secondaries who connect through a primary running PG2. It also prevents uploads to and downloads from known data-miners who are on the recommended PG2 lists. These data miners are on winmx for the sole purpose of collecting data about who is trading files. The p2p list we recommend from Bluetack is the most extensive one available at this time.
False:
PG2 is
not capable of this and never has been. Its
not possible for this to work and this is either a blatant lie or blatant stupidity, you decide.
PG2 has never been and never will be able to intercede WinMX and keep results from these IP lists from showing up in your searches. The
ONLY way to filter those is to use the WinMXGroup patch. The only thing PG2 can prevent are those IPs that ARE on the lists from connecting to you as a secondary (if your on primary).
The default lists on PG2
DO NOT have all of the fake file flooders on them, the only ones they do have are ones taken directly from WMW lists over the last few years. These lists are no longer available to the PG2 list makers. As of today there are at least 10 IPs that are NOT on that list each capable of uploading
100's of thousands of fake files and connecting to
hundreds of primary users to do it. As mentioned using PG2 even with a complete blocklist from WMW will NOT FILTER FAKE FILES from your searches.
There are data mining companies on all the p2p networks, they are doing just that 'data mining' for companies like Macrovision and Netsentry in order to supply information about what search terms and content to upload as fakes for the best results to disrupt and attack us. They do this via search results on WinMX and they use an IP address for exactly 15 minutes, then move on to another IP. Its not possible to block this activity, nor is it needed. These data mining companies are not looking for users but content. This is just another scare tactic. We have been fully aware of their existence here since long before the FrontCode caches went offline. I have yet to ever see one of the IPs used by the data miners on the PG2 lists.
There are untold numbers of users of p2p that have gotten letters from the RIAA and been sued that used PG2 (none from WinMX ever I might add), how do you explain this? If they are able to block them why weren't those people protected? I'll tell you why, they can not block them.
3. For primary connections: It blocks search results containing WinMXGroup spam for primary connections, and the search results of secondary users connected through them from containing this spam as well.
False:
The message posted by WinMXGroup is not received by any 3.0 dll users because they are using a up to date block list which the IPs that message originates from are on that list. This message is designed for those users that don't use the chat or forums and are unaware that a filtering solution is available. If you haven't seen this message its about 10-15 lines in a search result if you have them expanded, 1 line when not (default is not expanded), I can live with that if it helps one person stay on WinMX. We are losing users every day over the aggravations of stability and fake files being so hard to weed through, pie team maybe 'OK' with that fact but I am NOT. Like this idea or don't the above statement is false.
4. For secondary connections: It will prevent accidental downloads from anyone on the block lists, such as known data-mining companies, and they will also be prevented from downloading anything from you. Attempted downloads will just time out. This helps to protect your privacy while using WinMX.
False:
There are
905,868,463 IPs being
blocked by PG2. This number increases every day. That is 905 million IPs that have been deemed dangerous data mining scum bags. These include but are not limited to things like church organizations, College networks, town halls in small towns in America, entire Internet Service Providers they don't like, competitive software sites, users that have complained, all the WinMX Group peer caches and this site.
I urge you not to trust software that decide what to protect you from based on things such as 'we don't like them, lets add their IPs',
DO NOT take my word for it. Have a look for yourself folks, open Peerguardian, click on List manager, then highlight the lists and click Open List to read what things they are blocking. I assure you, you will find more names on those lists that sound legit then dodgy.
Imagine for a moment the frustration of the thousands of regular users that are on an ISP that was deemed 'not worthy' just trying to use WinMX and cant enter rooms, cant get downloads all because BlueTack wont remove any IPs ever. To Date I am unaware of them EVER removing any IPs that were at one time used by a pro media company and have since been reallocated to a harmless regular users.
5. For all connections: PG2 allows you to watch in realtime which IP address are being blocked. You have total control whether to continue blocking these IPs or allow them access to your computer.
True but:
If you think you can decide based on this how many of those 905 million IPs are just regular users trying to get your Spy-bot Search and Destroy downloaded from you, or how many of them are actually data mining on WinMX (data miners on WinMX never make a direct connection with you, as stated above they only do searches at this time on this network) then sure.. Otherwise this is ridiculous. You might as well make your own block list that says Everything :0.0.0.0-255.255.255.255 then watch in real time as everything is blocked and decide what you want to allow or not. You would probably be just as good, hell, BETTER than the PG2 list makers at deciding what is truly dangerous activity.
Do you know how to permanently allow or remove IPs from their lists? If you don't then how can someone say you have total control, unless they plan on teaching you how to use that control. Its not easy to allow users from PG2 block lists, and often the only way to permanently allow the IP is to make a new allow list, otherwise as soon as the program updates your changes are destroyed.
Does PGLite work as well as PG2?
No, it does not.
1. The guarding.p2p block list does not contain the IP addresses required to block the Dos/DDoS attacks on the WinMX Network.
Nor does it contain all of the Fake File Flooders that are connecting to you as primary and using your bandwidth to attack the rest of us.
2. The guarding.p2p block list only contains IP addresses of known fake file flooders. It does not offer the user any privacy protection from data collecting companies.
False:
This list Does
NOT contain all of the fake file flooders. Neither PG2 nor PGlite with this list can offer you any sort of protection for fake file flooders or data miners.
3. The guarding.p2p block list does not contain the IP address required to block WinMXGroup spam.
True:
No lists contain those IPs except the one that is used by the WinMX Group 3.0 Patch users. This statement infers that PG2 will block this public announcement, it will not.
Does the WinMXGroup Patch with integrated blocking work as well as PG2?
No, it does not.
1. The integrated block list does not contain the IP addresses required to block the Dos/DDoS attacks on the WinMX Network.
True, and for good reason:
What makes this UDP flood work is blocking software. As mentioned above the sheer fact your using something to protect yourselves is the one key ingredient to why this is a workable DDOS attack. Watch these for yourself on PG2 screen or logs. They try from one IP on about 6 consecutive ports locking those up, then within milliseconds move to another IP on 6 more consecutive ports and this continues for sometimes up to an hour. Peerguardian uses so many resources and locks those sockets and ports that your internet connections becomes unstable, causing loss of WinMX activity like queues, downloads, and making you fall out of rooms your in or losing users from rooms you host. Again I invite you all to try it with and without .. don't take my word for it.. see for yourself.
2. The integrated block list only contains IP addresses of known fake file flooders. It does not offer the user any privacy protection from data collecting companies.
True:
We don't block innocent users and IPs just because the data mining companies have the technology to spoof the originating IP that WinMX reads from normal regular ISPs. They love to use Verizon, BTCentral, DSL.net, bellsouth, and many many other regular ISPs just for this reason. Your not blocking them by using PG2 either.
3. The integrated block list does not contain the IP address required to block WinMXGroup spam.
False:
The integrated lists that 3.0 users have DOES block these IPs more lies or just stupidity?
Want to know why this rant is here and why your having to read it?
Because the pie team don't have the common sense to find out what is true, technically possible, or how things work before they go writing big long spews about why you should listen to them and do as your told no questions asked.
Go ask Gemini for me how does PG2 block search results? I'm dying to know, we're all dying to know how this works and how she magically discovered it. Really what was KM thinking making a patch to do this for you if we could have all just used PG2 with default lists.
How is it that so many people across the USA using other p2p systems have gotten letters from the RIAA collection agencies and their ISPs while using PG2?
Go ask the list makers for Peerguardian, bluetack.com why they don't remove real users IPs?
Why do WinMX Group Patch users stay on the patch?
Why are hundreds of thousands of users fully enjoying WinMX as it should be?
Why don't we have problems with UDP Attacks knocking us offline?
Please don't just take our word on these things, get facts, test these things yourself, find out the truth for yourselves. We will be glad to help anyone interested in investigating. We are willing to help you get the facts you need to make an informed decision about these things. Just post here or PM the moderators on the site for help.
