My Proxy settings are being changed

Is there anyway to stop my proxy settings from being changed?

If you’d like to disable our proxy setting change notification go to the GlassWire menu and choose “Settings” then the “Security” tab, then click “proxy settings monitor” and disable it.

I’m not sure if there is a way to make sure the proxy settings on your end can’t be changed. Please let us know more about your network and maybe we can suggest some ideas. Thanks!

By the way, this Blog post https://blog.glasswire.com/2014/09/16/glasswire-visualizes-malware/ is about a guy who was seeing constant proxy changes with GlassWire and it ended up he had malware on his PC.

Yesterday I switched from ADSL to cable modem Internet access (while using the same ISP). Since then I’ve been getting this alert roughly every hour.

What exactly does the alert mean? The proxy settings of my browser certainly haven’t changed. I guess the ISP is doing something with their servers (although my external IP doesn’t change) - but what exactly is GlassWire looking for?

As it is now, this alert is completely content-free to me. I know that my computer is not infected (malware is my area of expertise) and with the logs being spammed by this alert every hour, I would definitely miss a valid alert about a malicious proxy change.

Is there a way to configure the firewall and tell it what kind of “proxy change” is legitimate and what is not?

Addendum: Since after the connection change my IP is no longer dynamic, I installed a VPN. I am not worried about being tracked; I am worried about some jerk on the other side of the Internet DDoS-ing my IP in order to hamper my performance in a game, or some over-jealous admin banning me by IP because he didn’t like my opinion in his forum. So, most of the time the VPN is not used (I am not logged in through it). Still, could the installation of the VPN be the reason for the constant alerts? Again, what exactly is the firewall looking for, in order to produce this alert?

Hello,

This alert is caused by changes to your OS proxy settings. I don’t think it’s related to something happening upstream with your ISP. Does your ISP install some kind of custom software on your PC that could be changing your proxy settings somehow?

What do you mean by “OS proxy settings”? The settings used by Internet Explorer?

No, the ISP doesn’t install any custom software. However, I recently installed a VPN (although I rarely use it; I mean I am not logged in through it most of the time).

A VPN does not require a static IP in 90 % of cases. In any case its easier to data mine a static IP ,your ISP can change your IP if dynamic depending on traffic in most cases or if you have an intermittent disconnection on your line your exchange equipment will change your IP and lower your speed to counteract full disconnection it can also change to a static IP also to stop cycling through IP,s under a fault condition. I notice your problem ,if not caused by malware can be caused by network engineers related to a proxy used only in relation to a business providing a service to you and might not be related to GW or even your computer.

You must have misunderstood me. I didn’t get a static IP in order to use a VPN; I installed a VPN because my IP is now static.

Sadly, my ISP is not that accommodating. They wouldn’t even give me the login info for the cable modem. Their ADSL service assigned dynamic IPs, their cable modem service assigns static IPs - that’s it and it won’t change no matter what I want.

I’m afraid that I can’t make sense of the above. I can only assure you that my PC is not infected. My external IP doesn’t change. I don’t know what the other person meant by “OS proxy settings” - to the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing. In the past I’ve written a Python script that was accessing URLs using its own proxy settings. IE/Google use one setting for the proxy of the browser; Mozilla uses another. It’s an application-related setting; not an OS-related setting. In any case, neither the proxy setting for IE, nor the one for Mozilla changes on my machine.

One thing I can do is uninstall the VPN (or just exit the client) and see if the alerts stop. Would have been nice if I could tell GlassWire that something it complains about is legitimate without disabling completely all the alerts of this kind, but apparently this isn’t possible…

OK, just to confirm. I terminated the VPN client and the alerts stopped. So, it was indeed the VPN that was causing them - despite the fact that I was not logged in to the VPN (i.e., I wasn’t actually using it).

If you want to reproduce the problem yourselves, the VPN in question is HotspotShield. Maybe the original poster’s problem was caused by some VPN too.

I use a VPN often and I have never received an alert about proxy changes, but we should test with Hotspotshield and see if we can get rid of these alerts. It sounds like they have some custom software that uses proxies. I heard they have a lot of ads in their free version so maybe it’s related to the ads?