The alert viewer issue was a problem for several months, but isn't anymore, since the new firewall doesn't really alert about anything, so the alert viewer practically never pops up, which is what we're talking about here. In the linked article, there was a pic of a pop-up asking whether a risky connection should be allowed or blocked, but I doubt most people ever that pop-up because there was no mention of how to edit outbound connection rules. In the article, McAfee has blocked "The curl executable" from connecting www1.ajaxcdn.org. Fair enough, but that pop-up should appear the first time any program tries to connect to any site, and you can then allow or block it, and create rules.
Let's take a very simple example. Like many people, I have Microsoft Word installed. It being a word processor, there is zero reason for it to automatically connect online, anywhere, ever, unless specifically requested and allowed to do so by the user, perhaps for update purposes or perhaps to embed an external image. Any connection Word makes should therefore automatically be categorized as "risky". Yet, that's not the case. Word can connect to just about every site it wants, and the firewall doesn't inform the user. There is no pop-up, there is no prompt, there is not even a log note. In the previous firewall, there was. In just about every other firewall, there is. In the new "advanced firewall", there isn't. I have yet to encounter a single connection the new firewall would block, yet I have dozens, if not hundreds of connections I used to block with the old firewall, still want blocked, and now have to block them using another firewall despite paying for McAfee's firewall.
Or another example. As we know, FTP uses port 21. I use Filezilla to upload content to my server perhaps once a month or so. Under every other time, I want port 21 to be blocked, and when Filezilla wants to connect, I want to be informed about it, and then allow or block it. Again, this used to be possible in the old firewall, and is possible in every other firewall. But in McAfee's new "advanced firewall", Filezilla just connects as it pleases, no prompts, no log notes, nothing. If a user wants to block it, a user again needs a another firewall, despite McAfee being installed.
The level of security offered by "advanced firewall" is basically non-existent, and user has no control over it. Arguably, if some program would want to connect to www.full-of-viruses-and-other-nasty-stuff.com, McAfee might inform of it (or it might not), but that's not adequate protection, not by a long shot. People here want to make their own decisions on which programs are allowed to connect, which ports are open, and so on. Yet, all the settings to make that happen have disappeared. The question is, where have they disappeared, why have they disappeared, and are they coming back? Because if they're not coming back, the "advanced firewall" is not only useless. It's worse than useless, since it provides a false sense of security. You're thinking you're protected because you have this "advanced firewall" running, yet all the programs keep connecting as they please.
We'd all want the old firewall with all the settings back, preferably with even more settings and more alerts, but if it's a choice between Windows Defender Firewall and McAfee Advanced Firewall, and just Windows Defender Firewall, it would've been better for McAfee to remove the firewall altogether. At least Defender Firewall, as simple and flawed as it is, allows to you make certain settings which McAfee does not, so at the moment, the "advanced firewall" is just a hindrance that confuses Windows Security Center, and even if one want to use McAfee for everything else other than firewall, there doesn't seem to be an option to install McAfee without installing the firewall.
In all the decades McAfee has offered their security solutions, this is, in my opinion, the worst development ever. Removing Anti-Spam was bad, but at least it was removed completely. Removing App Boost... Well, I doubt too many people cared about that. But removing firewall (and it has been, for all intents and purposes, removed, when one considers what a firewall is for), one of the most important components of a security suite, and perhaps even more important than an anti-virus, is unimaginable. This needs to change, or a lot of subscribers will leave, and reviews will be terrible, McAfee being so inferior to every competitor out there.
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