Feature request - tray warning option for when Click to Block is operative

1

The subject line here says it all! :slight_smile:

Reason:
One serious disadvantage of using Windows Firewall is that, unlike most genuine third-party firewalls, it does not suspend a program when an alert dialog is displayed, but only blocks its connection attempt. I find this commonly very disruptive, because it causes program glitches and even failures / crashes - most of all when I’m installing a program and the installer tries to connect online, usually for quite legitimate and indeed often essential purposes. I wish GW could suspend programs when an alert is displayed, but to my understanding that would be impossible as the problem behaviour is simply a primitive and very unhelpful aspect of WF itself.

So, I came to realize that I could work round such problems by temporarily switching GW from ‘Ask to Connect’ to ‘Click to Block’ immediately before doing an installation or other action where expected GW prompts could be disruptive. The trouble then, however, is that it’s just so easy to forget to switch back to ‘Ask to Connect’.

For this reason I really do earnestly want the option of a tray warning to be showing while ‘Click to Block’ is operative, to help remind me to switch back to the much more secure policy. Also, an option to ensure that GW always starts up in Ask to Connect mode if its mode at last shutdown was Click to Block. – Thank you.

2

+1

Very annoying to relaunch every program !

3

Great idea. Maybe we can also offer some temporary “click to block” mode, that switched back after awhile?

We recently added the ability to switch between modes if you right click our bottom right tray icon, so please try it if you can.

This probably won’t be implemented for 2.0 but we can come back to it after the launch.

4

Thank you for your positive response, Ken. Actually your suggestion of a temporary switch to ‘click to block’ for a specified time did cross my mind, and, now you mention it I reckon that would be a great safeguard. I’d still like the system tray warning, though, as I’d really want to switch back to ‘ask to allow’ as soon as possible and not wait for the end of the allotted time period for the temporary change (i.e., in the situation where I’ve forgotten to revert the mode immediately). Or maybe the warning would be better in the form of a small on-top notification message that requires actually switching back to ‘ask to allow’ to make it disappear. That way the GW icon would remain free to continue showing its various discreet but very effective little red alert indicator numbers.