Blocked Connection Log?

Unless I’m dumb, a sequential collection log of any kind doesn’t seem to be a feature, but would be extremely helpful. And frankly I’m flabbergasted if it really is the case that there isn’t one.

I use the “Ask to Connect” mode (Which I do really like), and have a handful of programs that I blocked on first connect because they don’t seem important to have a connection. But on more than one occasion, some program will not be able to make a connection later, but that program itself does not show up in the list of blocked programs. Presumably because it is using some generic windows library or service that’s blocked, but it’s not immediately obvious which one, or if that’s even the problem. So I end up just disabling the firewall altogether as a test and bam, it connects. But I still can’t figure out which rule was blocking it.

So it would be very nice to have some kind of log showing which programs or rules blocked what connections, in sequential order - a log. Because otherwise I end up having to unblock a bunch of stuff through trial and error which defeats the purpose of having the firewall.

GlassWire has no way of knowing if a program has a dependency on another program. It just looks at the program executable that is trying to connect at the moment. When using “Ask to Connect”, the allow or block flag is assigned to each executable at its first attempt to connect. That state gets remembered by the firewall for any future connection attempts by that specific executable.

Best practice: Don’t block Windows! If you are blocking any Windows services you risk breaking Windows functionality or programs that depend on Windows services to communicate.

GlassWire has no way of knowing if a program has a dependency on another program. It just looks at the program executable that is trying to connect at the moment.

Right I understand and am fine with that. My point is that a blocked connection log would let me see and correlate that when program X fails to connect, and I see a blocked connection for Y, then X must be using Y, and therefore I should unblock Y.

My point is there are a lot of vague windows services that might not seem to do anything I care about, such as “Windows Phone Link” or whatever, so I’ll keep blocked. But obviously if I see it is being used by something I need, I’ll unblock it.

I think blocking unnecessary or unused programs is a decent use-case, but as it stands, I cannot differentiate which programs are unnecessary and which aren’t.

Blocked connection events (with timestamp) in the log might be helpful for manually correlating what was blocked and when. As it is now, once an application has been blocked the first time, all future attempts by the same application are silently blocked by GlassWire.

Maybe the GlassWire staff would consider that as a feature request?

Hi both,

Thanks for your input @zzz00m. ItIt is a interesting feature request. We have many features on our current roadmap, but I will certainly pass this on to out R and D team so they can include it for future developments.

Best,
Katie