This is the Advocacy page. We will talk about all sorts of things you can do to help get the word out about PeerBlock. Now that we're stable, we feel that everyone should be using it - don't access the Internet without it! =;)
Tell Your Friends
The easiest thing to do is to just tell your friends about PeerBlock! Make sure they understand what it can do for them, the sorts of Bad Things that could happen if they're not using it, that it's very simple to set up, and maybe a quick primer on HTTP Blocking.
And if they have any questions about it - or if it doesn't work for some reason - make sure to refer them to our forums and we'll try to get them straightened out. We try to be pretty friendly to "newbies"...!
Post on Forums
Are there some forum/messageboard sites you frequent? Let the people there know about us too!
Just make sure you're polite about it, and don't come across in a "spammy" way. Many forum sites have an "Offtopic" (or "Lounge", or "Everything Else", or something) forum which is meant for things of this nature not necessarily related to the forum site's focus - oftentimes this would be the best place to discuss PeerBlock. Of course if you're posting to a forum specifically devoted to firewall software, or Internet privacy, or anyplace else where PeerBlock is actually on-topic, posting in one of their "regular" forums would probably be best.
Don't forget however that people will often judge a program by how their user community behaves. So try to consider yourself acting as our representative when talking about us in public. Don't tell people that their favorite IP Blocking / firewall software sucks, just tell them why you think PeerBlock works better. People can be very opinionated about whether blocklists are a useful defense against "the bad guys". Don't take offense to their comments, talk about why you use it, the amount (and type) of connections you've seen blocked, send them a link to some of the pages we reference further down this page, but at the end of the day if they're fine with not using a program like PeerBlock then that's fine.
We also have a number of forum "sigs" you may wish to include in your posts:
TODO: INSERT FORUM SIGS HERE!!
Got a Blog?
Write a blog post about us! Check out our Press Room page for some additional information that could give you some additional details to help you out in this process. And if there's anything we can do to make it easier for you, don't hesitate to let us know.
Read someone else's blog post about us? Comment on it to let people know that this really is a great piece of software!
Social Networking
Do you use Facebook? Sign up as a Fan on the PeerBlock page, and let people know about how much you like us! Use Twitter? Follow us there to get updates as to what we're working on, and tweet about us! We also have one of those funky "social networking widgets" on our main page - this should help you share PeerBlock through a number of different sites.
Got a Website?
If you have a website of your very own, and think PeerBlock would be of interest to your users, why not link to us using one of the following links:
TODO: INSERT SITE LINKS HERE!!
Resources
In case you need some additional information to help people understand why a program like PeerBlock is a neccessity, the following links could be of use.
- The P2P War: Someone is monitoring your activities! (PDF) - An article published at the University of California, Riverside. It explains how nearly 100% of P2P traffic is monitored by one or more organizations, and how blocklists (like those used by PeerBlock) can protect against them.
