like, what’s the point of it? I mean I could just pull the cable and that’s quite a bit safer than having to rely on a firewall, especially if you dont even need admin or or at least secure dektop or whatever to trigger the switch
We wanted an easy way to block all network activity while I was away from my PC, without having to go to some control panel or unplug something. I guess it’s not as perfect as unplugging Ethernet, but nothing is perfect on computers unfortunately.
okay, well on my laptop unplugging is probably a bit quicker than mousing to glasswire, opening it and enable the block mode, you could even go so far and say that glasswire is a control panel, LOL!
For my PC, it’s kind of a pain to reach behind there. Also I think eventually that little tab on the ethernet cable will break if I disconnect it often.
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“Think” is not the operative concept – maybe “expect”. It WILL break. And not just once or just one. That little tab is simple, cheap and fallible.
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The real question here is what is the point of “ask to connect” if it just creates a rule and leaves it there permanently? They should at least have “ask to connect” with an “each/once” option, or just do like Little Snitch and allow you to make rules and/or allow for certain amounts of time.
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well a just for a certain time is certainly a good idea, but unlike the full block glasswire pops up and asks when something wants to connect, if you say no, it just stays silent, and if yes it lets through, especially helpful when you dont trust everything running in the background with maybe something new coming.
-> if you ask me, the “block yourself” vs “ask to connect” is pretty much the blacklist vs whitelist approach.
you could also cally it “allow first” vs “deny first”.
the full block has no exceptions whatsoever making it pretty much identical to just pulling the cable, so if you can pull the cable easily that’s actually more secure.
the ask to connect has the advantage that if you are on blacklist mode and have an application which you dont want to connect to the internet (e.g. an unpacker with a hidden ransomware), you probably arent quick enough to block it by the time it has transmitted at least some data.
and in the worst case it may already have transmitted everything it needs to do bad things, which cannot happen with whitelist mode because if an aplication which shouldnt need internet suddenly wants to go in, you just say no.
sure, but how do you un-whitelist or blacklist something? perhaps you accidentally clicked the wrong thing, or you wanted to allow everything to connect while installing a new program, but now want to lock it down, etc. You should at least be able to easily modify the list.
For GlassWire 2.0 we plan to add “profiles” so you can make different profiles to allow/deny apps, and save them, and switch between them. This update will be out early next year.
actually pretty simple. you can either flat-out deny something (if you know it will come again) by clicking the flame on the left of the Firewall tab (same as with click to block) or you can unlist it (for example to clean up old unneeded explicit denials, because in ask to connect mode they dont get through anyway if they may appear in the future) by clicking the x at the right end of the name column there (wont appear until you hover the cell with the name in it)
thanks. didn’t notice the “x” part. i really like this program; it just needs a better instruction manual (or one at all) haha. thanks again!
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yeah but the x is great for cleaning but if you want to blacklist it instead of just kicking it out of the whitelist (so it can shut up), just go for the flame
I used self block with alerts most of the time until yet but recently I decided to switch to ask since it’s a lot safer because software you use is already on the list and new software that shouldnt go into the net may just be too quick to get blocked for e.g. ransomwares to happen.
because at least the macro-viruses usually have the same stupid way of working which seemingly doesnt even get caught in heuristics. the go into the internet download an executable and run that. but if the application it’s using for download (i.e.MS Word) isnt permitted to go into the net anyway (after the first activation usually not really needed) the macro-virus cant unfold.
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I’m hoping this is bringing GlassWire closer to being a full-featured firewall.
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