Webroot Secure anywhere firewall

Is there any way to remove the 'warning' status in the task bar icon when I set the firewall component to 'off'....I want to use WFN (Windows Fire Notifier) and the 'warning' is annoying, I mean I could ignore it but then I wouldn't know if its alerting me of another fault!

 

when i asked this i was told no. but maybe something has changed i would like this option myself since i use outpost with it.

 

Is WFN still being actively supported.I dont see why you would use that when webroot has the same facility.

 

You can use other firewalls with WSA as it's only a outbound firewall and I use Look'n'Stop Firewall with WSA without any problems.

TH

 

There was some discussion about this being implemented, but I don't believe it's happened yet. What you can do now is turn the firewall ON and set the security to "allow all processes to connect to the internet unless explicitly locked". That pretty much disables it without triggering a warning.

 

http://www.webroot.com/En_US/sites/promo1.html?utm_source=community&utm_medium=community&utm_campaign=40mobile

Why then does WSA say that it is a 2-way firewall in there literature??

 

It is a 2-way firewall as WSA is just a front end for the windows firewall.Windows handles the inbound and WSA handles the outbound so combined you have a 2 way filtering system.

 

Okay,I understand your answer,BUT, too some(like me ),this is not what I had anticipated...I was thinking that WSA had both options built into there program....bummer for me....not fond of XP,s built in FW...I think Webroot should clarify that in there advertising!

 

Yes they should I will let them know.

https://detail.webrootanywhere.com/agenthelp.asp?n=Managing_the_Firewall

TH

 

XP's inbound firewall works perfectly well - there is nothing more that we, or anyone else, can do over it to make it more secure.

 

Not a happy state of affairs, I would like the opportunity to turn the WSA firewall off (completely) and make my own decisions based on WFC ....I don't what 3 'on' choices I'd like an off choice!

 

WFC on XP does not control per default on outbound (your PC --> Internet). So, you will not be able to make decision based on WFC. While outbound control by WSA is functional to its antimalware engine. i.e. Ensure malware is not allowed to connect out to the base potentially leaking sensitive information of your system. Definetively not wise to turn this off.

If you are not happy about XP role for the inbound (Internet --> your PC) you can turn XP off and use any other firewall you wish. This is not going to conflict with WSA.

 

WSA's firewall works explicitly as a -smart- outbound firewall. It does not ask about things it will or will not block. It is explicitly meant to block malware from connecting out. It is not made to be an ipfilters/ipchains utility, nor designed to be used as something to block specific processes at the user's whim.

Inbound firewalling, when it's even necessary, is best performed for most users by the Windows firewall. All other firewalling for advanced users who, for whatever reason, want to explicitly block a legitimate process, etc, can be done by other firewall software.

- Other firewalls are NOT intelligent on outbound traffic. They ask the human to make a decision, which can and is often made incorrectly.
- Other firewalls are not malware-aware. They just take a rule set and act on it without any way of knowing whether the packets or process they are acting on or ignoring is a threat.
- WSA's firewall works perfectly well with other firewalls. Technically it's a firewall extender, but trying to explain that to the average person is nearly impossible since they don't know what a firewall really is to begin with. So marketing made the less-annoying decision to just call it a firewall. Heck, when other companies have been calling things that are not even vaguely related to the network a "firewall" for years and people still use them and accept them as such, it shows that it's better to just redefine the term as needed. Humans do that a lot.

So leave WSA's firewall on.
If you want normal firewall stuff, leave Windows' firewall on too.
If you want fancy firewall control at your fingertips, add a different firewall instead of Windows'.

That is it, and it's relatively simple.

 

Its pretty much the same as WFC, just nothing like as granular then....I'll find a AV that allows ME to choose what components of it I wish to use or not.

 

Not really - it's inspecting every packet as it goes through and verifying the legitimacy of connections with the cloud. It has its own firewall filter drivers in place, unlike just a firewall controller, but it just relies on the Windows firewall for inbound blocking, which works perfectly well.

 

Well, its like saying "I like to hamper my AV if I want to" but then it make little sense from a protection point of view. If you run a security tool you should at least ensure is able to protect you in the best way possible. If you want to turn its ability OFF then just shut it down

But there is a basic flow in all of these. There is no reason to turn it off. It will not result in less conflicts nor less memory or CPU use or any operational advantages, only less protection. All in WSA is very optimized to fit in less than 1MB size and the outbound program control code its just few kbytes long.

Should be easy to understand at this point, right?

 

Yeah, I was going to say: What benefit do you mistakenly believe you gain if you turn the WSA firewall off? It has zero impact on system performance, zero impact on other firewalls, and provides extra protection.

Extra value at no extra cost in any way. No money cost. No performance cost. No compatibility cost. Or are you stuck back in the ancient days of firewalls?