Software update: PeerBlock 1.2 r693

A new stable version of PeerBlock has been released. It was about time, because the previous one was in November 2010. PeerBlock is intended to keep unwanted network traffic at bay. The list of unwanted hosts includes advertising providers and malware distributors, as well as anti-piracy agencies. All unwanted IP addresses are stored in a central database, which is then distributed among the users. The program is therefore, as it were, between, for example, a p2p program and the internet. The release notes for this version are as follows:

What’s New?

• Port Allow List – The new “Port Settings” tab allows you to unblock ports (incoming and/or outgoing). This means that PeerBlock will not filter any connections from/to those ports. This can for example be used if you’re running PeerBlock on a public FTP server, or if you want to ensure that outgoing SMTP mail communications are never blocked. Many thanks to night_stalker_z for his hard work on this feature!
• First-run Update Message – When you first run PeerBlock after upgrading, you will see a notice explaining why lists are only updating once per week. Hopefully this will help to alleviate people’s confusion about this.
• Better Weekly List-Updating – We’ve made some improvements that should help ensure that free users continue to get their free weekly list-updates.
• I-Blocklist Subscription Settings – To make it easier for you to configure PeerBlock to use an I-Blocklist Subscription, new I-Blocklist Username/PIN fields have been added to the bottom of the “Settings 1” tab.
• Separate Settings Tabs – Instead of having one Settings tab with those silly “Next” and “Prev” buttons on it, we’ve broken that out into two separate “Settings 1” and “Settings 2” tabs.
• Improved List-Update Error Handling – We’ve worked with I-Blocklist, who hosts the vast majority of the lists people use, to create improved error messaging for the various problems that may occur when updating lists. If something occurs during update-checking, the error message displayed should be much more meaningful.
• Improved List-update Error Window – Should you hit any errors while updating your lists – 429 or otherwise – we will now pop up a more informative error window, along with a button you can click to jump straight to our site to check for more information .
• Updated Error Windows – If you encounter a catastrophic error, the message that appears will now tell you to go visit peerblock.com/errors. This will redirect you to a forum-post on which the most common error-messages are displayed, to help you figure out what has gone wrong, and what can be done to fix it.
• (Re)Load Previously Downloaded Lists – Previously, there was a problem where if you disabled and then re-enabled a list in the List Manager, that list wouldn’t be reloaded until it successfully downloaded an update. Now, if it can’t update that list it will still load the last version you did successfully download.
• Removal of Windows 2000 Support – Windows 2000 is quite old by now, we hope that nobody’s still running it; if you are, you can continue using the previous PeerBlock version. This release does support all Windows variants from Windows XP through to Windows 8.1, including server variants. (But not Windows RT.)