Okay, so I run PeerBlock all the time. Not because I download a bunch of stuff off torrents or anything, but because I don’t want to end up going to the wrong site and having my world wrecked. It works for me, and whenever there’s a problem loading a page I can take a quick look and see what’s going on.
Well, today I couldn’t load my own site because I use CloudFlare and all of a sudden PeerBlock has decided to see it as the enemy. What’s up with that?
I’ve run all kinds of Google searches trying to see what’s going on, but the only ones that seem to have had a problem with CloudFlare was Malwarebytes, and that was back in 2012. (The issue was that CloudFlare does not police the sites that use its services, and some of the sites they were serving were ones that give how-tos on creating malicious software and hacks. Malwarebytes objected; CloudFlare rebutted with “free speech and the rights of the users,” as the sites themselves weren’t producing the viruses, they were just giving instructions on how to make them.)
This is incredibly frustrating to me because I’m a big PeerBlock fan. It, along with WOT and Ghostery, has saved me from going to some truly skeazy sites because of reckless clicking. And now, if it’s not even going to let me go to MY OWN SITE, then I guess I can’t use it anymore. But what makes me worried is that other people using PeerBlock won’t be able to reach my site.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do :/
I know that I can right-click and allow certain IPs for 15 minutes, 1 hour, or forever, but I don’t want to allow for forever, because while I use CloudFlare, I’m a paranoid person and I refuse to give any IP carte blanche. Just because they’re okay today doesn’t mean they’re going to be okay tomorrow. Plus there are some sites that really deserve a second thought before being clicked on.
These guys are located on the P2P iblocklist. Starting range to ending range. For some reason the Search doesn’t work for me. It’s a hassle, as the scroll on the side will jump down by hundreds of numbers, so you have to highlight one and page up or down.
CloudFlare IP: 108.162.192.0 – 108.162.255.255
Amazon Technologies IP: 54.224.0.0 – 54.255.255.255
It is possible to go into the iblock lists and edit them, but the only options are allowing them for a set period of time or allowing them forever.
What is Peerblock? PeerBlock lets you control who your computer “talks to” on the Internet. By selecting appropriate lists of “known bad” computers, you can block communication with advertising or spyware oriented servers, computers monitoring your p2p activities, computers which have been “hacked”, even entire countries! They can’t get in to your computer, and your computer won’t try to send them anything either. – Peerblock.com. Basically, while PeerBlock does not make you anonymous — that’s what a VPN or proxy service is for — it does keep your ISP from throttling your massive amounts of downloading (PORN!).
What is CloudFlare? CloudFlare is a content delivery network and distributed domain name server service marketed as improving website performance and speed and providing security. – Wikipedia. Basically, these guys stand between you and DoS attacks. When someone decides to start banging your servers to crash your site, CloudFlare is the one taking the hit. Though if your bank or other supposedly secure networks are using CloudFlare, you might want to look at banking elsewhere, as they should be able to afford a real firewall and not something you can tack on for free.
What is Amazon Technologies? A Reno subsidiary of Amazon. Amazon rents a lot of their servers to other services in the cloud. Basically, they take a snapshot of a page, and that’s what they’re serving to you when you visit those sites. It saves on load time, and if the site is down you won’t even notice because you’ll still be receiving a page to view.
I’m already leery of constantly seeing “Detected AP2P on Amazon EC2 Cloud” popping up in my PeerBlock window, as it makes me wonder what exactly are they taking from me while I’m visiting sites using their cloud services. Which is why I’ve refused to right-click and allow Amazon forever in PeerBlock, as I can’t know who they’re renting their servers to and for what purpose. Plus there’s always the concern that someone might be hijacking their IP, which I guess is totally a thing 😛
(AP2P = Anti-Peer-to-Peer. They keep watch to make sure you’re not using torrents to download illegal [copyrighted] materials. The Internet police, keeping you safe and jamming up your traffic logs.)
The only thing that seems to work on keeping CloudFlare, CloudFront, and Amazon powered sites visible while running PeerBlock is to disable the P2P iblocklist when surfing the Internet. Unless you’re actively torrenting, I don’t think it will be that much of a problem. And at least you’ll be able to see why The Oatmeal loves the mantis shrimp (which is a crazy awesome sea creature by the way).