Goodbye Online Armor - Welcome GlassWire!

Thanks for using GlassWire! It’s fun to hear how people use our software so we can make changes and continue to improve.

I’m not using it yet, but most probably will once OA becomes obsolete:

GlassWire looks great. The only thing I might miss in it are those little flags of the countries my notebook is connected to I still can see now on my OA…,

No biggie at all of course, just whining, pay no attention. :wink:

We use flags also, but maybe it’s not in the same exact way as OA. For example if you go to the Firewall tab it shows a flag of the server the app is connected to.

Also if you click the graph it shows all your connections for that spike along with the hosts and their country flags.

One cool thing about GlassWire is that you can go back in time and see your past network activity. There aren’t many firewall products that can do that.

Great! I had not seen the flags yet, but noticed the “back in time” feature.

On Emsisoft’s site it says about Online Arnor: “The official end of technical support will be March 31, 2016.”

I would almost skip right over the license time I still have on OA and go straight to GlassWire… :smile:

:heart_eyes: I’ve been trying out GlassWire and I like it very much.

I still have 477 days left on my Online Armor licence, and 476 for my Emsisoft Anti-Malware, and since they are offering me to switch to their Emsisoft Internet Security package which includes a firewall and get compensated for the loss of not having the full license time I paid for on OA, I’ve been thinking about that.

I saw one can turn GlassWire’s firewall off, and still keep the rest of it’s marvelous features working. Which is exactly the setting I would like to use once having switched over to Emsisoft Internet Security, no longer using Online Armor.

But I noticed that after reboots GlassWire’s firewall is turned on again. For my case it would be great if the setting remained unchanged. To every time after a reboot turn it off again would be no biggie. But after that I also still have to go to Windows’ firewall and turn that one off as well, as that is automatically enabled by GlassWire when disabling GlassWire’s firewall…

Just a hint from a lazy guy… pay no attention. :wink:

Sorry to hear GlassWire is turning on after reboot. We’ll investigate this problem and see what’s happening. Thanks for reporting this problem.

It was not meant to do that? And you’ll disable that? Great! Thank you. In that case I’ll happily keep utilizing that handy program.

I thought is was a safety feature, so people have their firewall turned on automatically after reboots, in case they would have forgotten they had turned it off before rebooting.

Of course in that case a pop-up could appear notifying the user after reboot that GlassWire’s firewall is off, with the options to keep it that way or turn it on, both with a button for either choice on the popup. It would be good to not have that popup disappear until one clicks on either button. This for those who want to use the GlassWire firewall of course. And for those who only want to utilize the other features maybe an extra check box could be added to keep it turned off after reboot without seeing that popup. But otherwise just one click on a popup would be no problem at all of course. I’m just exaggerating now, like a kid who already has a beautiful toy, but wants still more… :blush:

From what I understand our On/Off option does not disable the Windows firewall but instead it just disables the ability for the apps you blocked with GlassWire to continue being blocked. For example if you blocked IE and you turn our firewall to off then it will not be blocked anymore.

When one chooses to turn off GlasWire’s firewall a panel appears with this message:

"Your Windows Operating System Firewall is disabled.
GlassWire’s firewall will be inactive until you enable Windows’ firewall.
Would you like to enable it?
[Yes] [No]

So it looks like GlassWare’s firewall is enabled only when Windows’ firewall is? The “OFF” button is grayed out for me now. If that means GlassWire’s firewall is off, that would solve the difficulty for me. Because in that case it is still turned off after reboot.

When I enable Windows’ firewall the button on GlassWire for its firewall is green with “ON” on it.

PS:
I’m beginning to understand I think. I got confused because turning Online Armor’s firewall on automatically turns Windows’ firewall off, and vise versa. (It does give a message about that so one knows.)

Please go to the top left GlassWire menu and choose “about” and let me know what version of GlassWire you’re using. Thanks.

Version 1.1.7b.

Problem solved: I just uninstalled Online Armor, and now the setting of GlassWire’s firewall remains the same after reboot. So it was Online Armor that turned off Windows’ firewall and/or interfered with GlassWire’s firewall.

So glad I can now switch to Emsisoft Internet Security and keep enjoying GlassWire for its Graph and other features, minus the firewall, (which I’ll have from Emsisoft.)
:sunglasses:

During development we made GlassWire’s firewall turn off the Windows firewall, but we decided this could be confusing or even dangerous for the user so we decided not to allow GlassWire to disable the Windows firewall.

All right. Understandable.

Problem solved for me. See above edition.

PS:
I just noticed that both GlassWire’s and Window’s firewalls settings remain the same after another reboot. So it definitely was OA that changed them.

Also, when I now click on GlassWire’s gray OFF button, it turns green with ON on it, and vise versa, without GlassWire’s panel appearing with that message about turning off Windows’ firewall.

Thanks. We’ll try to recreate and fix this.

Thank you for all your assistance.

Still a bit confused as this setup is all new to me.
I was mistaken that Windows’ firewall is not enabled after a reboot, although I had it disabled before rebooting. And that GlassWire panel still appears under different circumstances. (Don’t know if that has to do with me having disabled Windows’ firewall or not. I guess so.)

The reason I thought it was better to disable Windows’ firewall while having GlassWire’s enabled is because of articles like these I’d already read many years ago:

"Should I disable the Windows Firewall if I install another one?

Yes. Just like an antivirus your computer should only have one software firewall enabled and running. Having more than one firewall can cause conflictions and often will prevent your Internet from working properly."

I also wonder how this would work once I have Emsisoft Internet Security and its integrated firewall installed.

Just to make sure: when the green button with “ON” on it is appearing, that means GlassWire’s firewall is on, or that it is of?

GlassWire doesn’t have its own firewall, instead it uses the Windows firewall. When GlassWire’s firewall is set to “off” it means that whatever you have blocked with GlassWire’s firewall tab is no longer blocked but it does not mean the Windows firewall is off.

With GlassWire there is no need to change your default Windows firewall settings unless you have turned it off for some reason. We don’t feel it’s safe to turn off the Windows firewall so we recommend you turn it on as soon as you can.

Thank you much!

I don’t know yet if Emsisoft’s Internet Security’s integrated firewall does the same as Online Armor: turn off Windows’s firewall, but I’ll ask on their forum.

I already found out by installing the free 30 day trial version of Emsisoft Internet Security.

Yes, it turned windows’ firewall off. And it says disabled after a reboot. But GlassWire is still working fine. Only the firewall flame is grayed out.

This is just perfect for me!

I’ll switch over to Emsisoft Internet Security, and have the pleasure of enjoying all the GlassWire features I like so much as well.

Looks like it now really is goodbye old beloved Online Armor for me. But no :cry: of sadness. Maybe a few :joy: of joy.
:smiley:

Since no links are allowed me here, copy/paste this in a new tab of your browser:
“Substitute for OA Firewall Status Monitor”