Is there an option to delete the log file to free some space in the storage drive? If not please include it, and make it easy for the user to find it and show the size of the log file.
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At Ken_ClassWire’s suggestion, the following is copied here from the general discussion. I appreciate the very fair response so far to my deliberately rather boat-rocking post. I have updated my original post as placed here, on the basis of prompts from some of the nice people who’d responded to my original post.
I do love GW - I really do! It’s a brilliant program for which, at least from my perspective, there is not yet any worthwhile alternative.
– Except.
Please, we now have the long-awaited GW 2, and, oh my, its ‘firewall’ is indeed improved - but it is STILL only a TOY one! Please excuse my very real exasperation and scathing view of the travesty that the GW ‘firewall’ still is. Okay, my use of the epithet ‘toy’ here is figurative, but is necessary in order to hammer home my point to some rather deaf ears somewhere.
Seriously, I was assuming that at least when GW 2 came out I could dispense with Windows Firewall Control (WFC) and have a proper front-end for Windows Firewall right there in GW. And what do I find? – It’s only been tinkered with round an edge or two, and nearly all of the requests for a proper firewall UI in this forum have fallen on deaf ears!
It is clear that whoever chooses which features are to be included in GW has no intention at all for GW to have a genuinely useful or competitive firewall UI. So, having reverted to WFC after some 15 minutes of incredulity at the lack of useful change in the GW ‘firewall’ department, I now assume that I shall have to continue using WFC (with the GW ‘firewall’ switched off) indefinitely.
Here are the primary necessary features that I can think of now, which are still needed in GW’s firewall UI (there will be other important things that I haven’t remembered here), which are all fully implemented in WFC.
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Full list of the Windows Firewall rules, both inbound and outbound!! – At the moment GW does NOT display any of them at all! Instead it displays only a separate list of outbound rules that it itself has created. GW2’s one ‘improvement’ that I could see is that now its listing is ‘synced’ with the genuine WF list. Please, what we need is direct display of the WF rules themselves - and ALL of them, with all parameters displayed or at least displayable!
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Search and quick filter facilities!
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The standard quick sort of the list, based on any column, executed by a click on the relevant column heading (both for ascending and descending order), which you get in almost all programs’ listings, but not yet in GW!
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ALL parameters of each rule displayable (which they are not at all at the moment in GW), but with a right-click menu function on column header bar to choose which columns are displayed. That’s quite a lot of columns (a choice of 18 - yes, eighteen! - in WFC), but if the user can choose which to show, then everyone can be satisfied.
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Order of columns to be rearrangeable by dragging.
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Full rule editor popup on double-click upon any rule.
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Facility to manually create custom rules, including temporary ones, using the full rule editor mentioned in item 6.
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Full WF connection logs display function, with quick filtering both for inbound/outbound and for keywords.
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‘New connection’ alerts need more choices than just Allow / Block, such as ‘Block once’, ‘Block temporarily’, and 'Block / Allow only through ports nnnn-nnnn, and so on - though of course the extra choices could be hidden through a user option in Settings, to keep things at the simplest for people who want it that way.
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Those alerts also need the option of a user-specifiable sound. I have an excellent distinctive but not too intrusive sound that I have WFC use for its alerts.
I haven’t time to give anything like a complete rundown, for WFC has masses of additional facilities and options available, but I think that the above list should give some idea of why I most definitely will not be using the GW ‘firewall’ in the foreseeable future and sticking with WFC as my firewall UI, while greatly valuing GW for all its other functions.
So, for the foreseeable future I have written-off the GW ‘Firewall’ as a travesty, a toy, and will not spend further time in concerning myself with the odd small ‘improvements’ that may be made to it. Basically it needs complete redesign to be a serious proposition as a firewall UI.
…Actually, having said all that, I would be not be sounding quite so demanding if the GW ‘firewall’ were described in the first place in such a way as to make it clear that it is NOT a full firewall interface / management system (for a start, stop calling it a ‘firewall’, because that tells everyone that it is a firewall, which is is not really (in any case the real firewall is Windows Firewall, so anything managing it should be called what it is, and not a firewall!) - and sets up false expectations.
Maybe something like ‘some basic / elementary firewall features’, but also making it clear that one needs other software for full firewall management. But even then, as other posters have pointed out, many basic UI features are currently lacking and much needed even for GW’s very limited firewall management functionality.
Sorry to have cause to sound a bit bruising on this occasion, but somebody at GW needs a hefty kick up the butt to get them thinking more clearly about the real needs for a firewall UI, and about how they describe GW’s firewall-managing features in their documentation, program interface and promotional material without misleading people into thinking GW would give them a proper, fully-featured firewall.
Philip
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Just found out this thread so I want to post some request in proper place.
1.I really think Firewall tab’s UI need to separate block and non-block into 2 tabs or have 2 separate columns.When you have around 20-30 blocked it will be troublesome to scroll up and down all the time.
2.And it will be great to be able to delete old apps from the firewall list, which is uninstalled and not existed anymore.After a few time updates the app there will be 5-6 same icons in the list and it’s hard to know which is which.
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On the FIREWALL tab, when we see some activity of some process, there is a small icon with the (+4 MORE) that when we click it, shows a list to WHERE the process is connecting to. Can devs please add a small BLOCK/BLACKLIST DOMAIN feature so some the firewall blocks ANY data being sent to any particular site is blocked.
eg. Firefox sends random packets to Akamai even when we are NOT using Akamai (thanks to our browsers sending out packets without our knowledge). Why permit 3rd parties to sniff our information without consent? It’d be a nice feature to be able to blacklist these domains so nothing is sent out, and also reducing bandwith.
We’ll also need a list of all blacklisted sites, so we can tweak/unblock them as needed later.
Thanks.
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By Default, GW PERMITS all network traffic to pass through. We should have an OPTION in preferences, to:
- ALLOW all traffic (current default).
- (BLOCK) and ASK for permission (with a pop up).
We also need a toggleable BIG RED BUTTION somewhere on the UI somewhere that will BLOCK ALL TRAFFIC in an emergency.
Thanks. 
2 Likes
Please go to the GlassWire firewall tab and choose “Ask to connect” or “Block all” modes with the 2.0 trial.
For your other comments, host blocking is a popular request and we’re working on it.
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G’day Ken - v2 looks really impressive!!! Can’t wait 'til we have multi-user facilities 
and I can buy a copy 
I think I’ll only need the Pro, I only have a home setup, no servers or stuff like that. This will be perfect to put alongside Voodooshield as realtime protection… When we have multi-user!
Cheers, Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year 
EDIT: Oh yes, WIndows 7
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Not a bad idea, but I’d go a bit further: how about logging up to a given size, say 50KB, then close and archive while starting a new file. Date/time-stamping the archive files would also be useful. I’ve often pondered the concept of automatically deleting older archives–say 6 or 12 months–but OTOH the moment you delete the file you find you need it! I think this must be up to the user really.
A manual method could be enabled: if the log file does not exist, the app builds a new one, so you can simply pull the old one (with GW stopped!!!) into an archive folder. Could GW survive tooth extraction without anaesthetic?
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I really want to see custom color. open a color selector for DL/UL and use those colors.
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I’would like to manage directory in firewall tab to put application by family class.
For example a directory Adobe, Microsoft, etc.
By this way it’s more easy to find application in this tab.
Ohh and thanks for your soft. I really like it!
I took the Basic to encourage you and have some features.
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I’ve downloaded the software before and I was really impressed with some of the features of it, however I also completely agree with your points so far.
I don’t think that it’s really a firewall at present. What I see it as, is a kind of process explorer for networks with a few nice touches around it; for instance the integration with Virus Total is a really good idea and it visualises traffic pretty nicely - although I admit that this could be better.
So far my suggested areas of improvement are:
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If you’re going to create, advertise, and sell a firewall feature, it would be great to create a firewall feature that allows proper configuration. I’m not going to repeat it, but I pretty much echo the comments of @PhilipGoddard.
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A free/open source management console. I am using your product on my home Windows estate and find that it’s really useful/interesting at investigating bandwidth hogs, beaconing, and processes that are acting nefariously or insecurely. In order to do this, I have to log onto each device individually and manually check what’s going on. What would be really useful, especially as you progress as a company, would be a centralised web-based management, monitoring, and logging console. If you are to break into the corporate arena which, lets face it, is where the money is, this needs to be created ASAP.
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Which brings me onto: A logging solution that is either stored plain-text or can be exported via syslog. I can see a real-world use for this product in many security environments. One of the benefits of it is that it gives a lot of information without blocking traffic; which is absolutely crucial to availability-critical applications. If this information could be put into a syslog format and formatted, or stored in an external flat-text file for collection by an agent, this data could be harvested directly into a SIEM and used to aggregate against other log files and help analysts create a much better picture. It may do this already, but I haven’t been able to find it. If it can, could someone kindly point me in the direction?
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More difficult and probably too much of a step towards a HIDS solution, but implementation of “smart” rule sets. What would be really great is if the product could use the data that it presents and look for potential nefarious patterns. For instance, a Word/Excell document starting a Powershell script, or numerous packets of the same transport-layer protocol coming from the same source to different ports without establishing a session could be an indication of a port scan. If you could somehow create these alerts, AND push them into some form of centralised logging capability, this could be a really powerful tool for both the security community and enterprise alike.
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one thing unless it was already mentioned would be a way to allow/deny this now for a short while but keep it away from the list (or delete later) and if needed ask again, especially with setups it’s annoying to have a metric f-ton of entries of setups or whatever genericly named applications that wanted internet, because they are on the list no matter whether accepted or denied.
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would very much like to see GlassWire implement something like the network monitor with world map in Little Snitch on OSX
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Please remove the Inactivate Apps area as i find it a total waste.
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Firewall tab request: Move the ‘Delete App’ function (small ‘x’) in the center of the firewall list into the ‘Info’ popup for the application icon, and group with the ‘Virus Scan’ and ‘Hide App’ buttons’.
I just found this today. Well hidden in an odd place as it is now…
Firewall tab request: Add sort, quick filter, and/or search to this list. This has been mentioned along with other requests, but I thought it also deserved a specific mention for this tab.
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Being able to set the maximum period which the history is kept would be nice.
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I’d like to see in the “Things” display, the amount of traffic currently going through each device/MAC address. I’d like this so in periods of super-slow wireless response I might identify the culprit.
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