After installation GlassWire will show on the graph that it accesses the network and contacts GlassWire.com. GlassWire connects to GlassWire.com to check for software updates. If you don’t like GlassWire checking for updates you can block GlassWire with its own firewall under “Usage” but then you won’t be alerted to new software versions.
We recommend letting GlassWire check for updates otherwise you may never hear about security fixes or other important changes to our software in the future.
I would recommend an improvement in this approach. The very first thing I did was attempt to disable glasswire from initiating an external connection. The fact that you allowed me to disable it was the first factor in determining if I allowed it to continue running. So allowing disable is a good thing.
The concern will be that this free product, which integrates with a security feature, is going to be used to leak data. After all, since it’s free,you have to monetize something.
To help with this concern, the update feature should use notifications. Disable the connection by default. When update wants to run, it should notify that it is trying to run and request that the connection be enabled. Then once update completes, the connection should close back to the disabled state. Allow us to click “allow once” or “allow always” buttons. Also allow us to edit settings and modify the frequency of checking so that if we set it to check once per day, and we only see the traffic to glasswire occurring once per day at the time that we indicated, then our trust for glasswire will increase.
As of right now, I have wireshark and procmon watching glasswire. I don’t trust it yet. In time that trust will come and after that point is when I start mentioning it to my contacts. By making the automatic update checking more of a transparent mechanism, where you are clearly trying to be very trust worthy and careful about our perception, then your product will blossom.
Clohman,
The other bad thing about disabling GlassWire’s update notifications is that GlassWire can’t update its suspicious hosts list. I think we’re going to change the domain to update.glasswire.com so it’s clear the software is doing an update. Someone else suggested we add a tooltip about it too and that’s a good idea.
GlassWire is currently free but if you check the bottom of our index page it makes it clear that we plan to make money by selling a premium version of the software. We don’t plan to remove any features from the current version but instead we’ll add port related features, multiple remote server connections, etc… We are not going to collect user graph data. I think if we tried to collect user graph data it would ruin our reputation as a privacy tool plus it’s very creepy in my opinion. User graph data never goes to our server at all and we have no mechanism in place to collect graph data from users.
I like your update idea but since we check for suspicious host updates once a day I worry it would make everyone annoyed at us with extra alerts and most of our users would never get the suspicious host updates.
I hope after studying GlassWire for an extended period you’ll recommend us to your contacts. Thank you for your feedback and thanks for trying our software.
Just make the notification configurable. It doesn’t have to be enabled by default. However by having the option to enable it, you will increase trust.
We’ll see what we can do. Thanks again!
I know this is an old thread but the GlassWire update notification has already trashed 3 of my TV recordings as this laptop is being used [temporarily] as a Windows Media Center server.
When the update dialog message appears, it seems WMC stops recording or doing anything until I close out the GW box.
I paid for the software so this is not just a nag screen.
@WhitleyC I’m sorry about the problem. We haven’t sent out an update notification since January I think.
For now please go to the Firewall tab and block GlassWire and its service from accessing the network, then you will not see an update alert. Meanwhile with our 2.0 software we’ll add a feature to “skip” versions, or not get alerts.
We released an update today so please update today and you won’t see any alerts for awhile even if you don’t make GlassWire block itself.
Well right now I must run without any firewall as if I try to enable GlassWire’s firewall it tells me that AVAST is preventing it from running. If I attempt to enable Windows Firewall I get a similar message that AVAST is controlling this.
If I enable the AVAST firewall my laptop/media server and KODI running on an NVIDIA shield do not communicate at all.
That was the original reason I went to GlassWire was none of my Android phone remote apps would work with my TV/NVIDIA Shield and GlassWire had worked well for some time.
It appears that AVAST Internet Security has now full control over this and I will have to deal with them to find out if I can remove Internet Security while leaving the anti-virus protection intact.
We hope you’ll continue to keep GlassWire as a network security monitor if you decide to stick with Avast. Lots of our users do this and we may add a “network security monitor” mode in one of our future updates for users who want to use another firewall. We’re also working on adding the ability for paid users to disable updates. You can also run GlassWire in “Snooze” mode by going to the top left GlassWire menu and choosing it. This should snooze alerts for awhile. Thanks!
Well running the update just made matters worse as now GlassWire will not run. I get a GlassWire service stopped running and clicking on the Connect button makes multiple attempts to connect to a server but fails…
Seems AVAST is being quite aggressive and I have shut off all the Web based functions and the firewall but still no joy.
This does not seem to be your problem at this point and I doubt it will be resolved as long as Avast remains in any form on my computer. Need to find an alternative.
Strange. I wonder if Avast has our service blocked temporarily due to a false positive.
Please uninstall GlassWire completely, reboot (important), and then reinstall our latest version by using the “clean” option and let me know if you’re able to get GlassWire to work that way.