Making Moblock actually useful for everyday use

Moblock is a fantastic alternative to PeerGuardian for Linux systems. Running some form of blocking software is important to protect your privacy when using P2P applications like BitTorrent and Gnutella; if you're not using anything, you should be.

Unfortunately, in it's default configuration the filtering can be a little aggressive. There is nothing whitelisted (explictly allowed), so any IP address caught in the filter is blocked. This list of filtered IP address ranges includes addresses belonging to Microsoft and Google, meaning that all traffic to those companies is blocked - including HTTP traffic and instant messaging.

To enable both MSN and Google Talk, find the following line in the file /etc/moblock/moblock.conf:

#WHITE_TCP_OUT="http https"

Now, remove the '#' from the start and add the ports as follows:

WHITE_TCP_OUT="http https 1863 5222"

Presto!

The numbers 1863 and 5222 are the port numbers for the MSN protocol and XMPP protocol that Google Talk uses. If you have another application that is being blocked by Moblock, you should be able to find what port it uses here.

For installation instructions on Ubuntu, check out this Ubuntu Forums thread.