iolo Personal Firewall

From iolo (of System Mechanic fame) comes a stand-alone firewall. To my eyes it looks remarkably like McAfee's older product bolstered by some of iolo's own technology. Have a look: http://www.iolo.com/fw/1/

 

anyone try the firewall yet? Stem?

 

It is a basic application based firewall, with the ability to set services/ports for use. There is an option for "IntelliDefense" which checks applications, and will compare to a database if that application is a threat etc. I did not enable this feature, as I prefer to chose myself, and did not want the firewall attempting to connect out, but, even with this options disabled, and the auto updates disabled the firewall is making a lot of unauthorized regular outbound connections to svc.iolo.com (Various server IP`s 216.246.12.2**), certainly not something I personally like. But anyway,...

Rules for firefox:

 

There are the options to allow certain ports/services or to enter user ports. I did not like the defaults settings at all in this area, as most default setting where to allow inbound, even on such ports as HTTP. I have change the defaults, and attaching just a small section of the included filter rules.

 

Unacceptable behaviour in my book.

 

Checking my own logs, the firewall is connecting out every minute,..... as I have no options checked for any outbound (updates ets), and no rules in place to allow this outbound, then it is certainly not something I like to see.

I cannot find any logging within the firewall to check if these events would be shown by the firewall.


Any other info required before I remove this firewall?

 

They need to explain the reasons for those connections and provide ways to disable hard-codec rules.