Suddenly blocked from accessing PeerBlock web site.

[A Canuck]

What is going on with PeerBlock lately? First their software stops
updating lists properly. I open an issue at their support forum on it.
There's next to no movement on that issue for weeks and weeks.

And now today I find I'm blocked from their support forums. It says
"account suspended". I can't even *read* the forums, or any part of
peerblock.com -- shouldn't the worst case be that I merely can't *post*
anymore if they suspended my account? Even deleting all peerblock.com
cookies doesn't work, so it looks like they're blocking all access from
my IP range.

All for pointing out a defect that they admitted was a defect.

How do I force them to a) let me at least view their support forums
again, if not necessarily post to them, and b) fix their damned defect?

Failing that, is there a decent alternative out there to inhibit sniffing
my traffic by assorted corporations and governments?

A cursory web search turns up little -- only PeerBlock and VPNs. VPNs
aren't an option for me, as none of them are free and I'm unable to pay
for any kind of on-the-web services, as I do not have an American credit
card, which every kind of online purchase seems to require. I can pay for
things by cash and check, which suffices for normal bill payments
(including to an ISP and other utilities like phone, electricity), but
that's it. No VPNs (or Warcraft or Steam purchases or Netflix or etc.)
for me.

And really I don't see the justification for the after-ISP-bill-is-paid
price of safe P2Ping to jump from $0.00 to $8.99/mo anyway. Aren't prices
for online things supposed to trend monotonically *downward* as the unit
costs are tiny and ever-shrinking and overheads are amortized over ever-
growing populations of users online?