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antevans
Former Member
Message 1 of 3

Firewall settings use case infinite loop question

I am using the firewall in Antivirus Plus on Windows 7 Home Premium. Is this product finished? I've already had problems with it blocking NetBEUI ports that I had explicitly opened. I somehow solved that, so I can't open a thread here. Here's something I can't solve. Unless I am being pretty dumb, there is an infinite loop in the use cases assumed by the design.

To reproduce, set Firefox permissions to 'Outgoing' - the only sensible option. Switch off all the nag options in Gerneral Settings and Alerts, if you can find it.

Use Firefox and wait for the giant nag box to pop up telling you that some component (Firefox, plug-in container, whatever) wants Internet Access.

Pop-up options are Allow Always, Allow Once, Block. These options do not correspond to the options in the program settings, namely Full, Outgoing, Block, because that would be too easy.

Allow appears to set program permission to Full, i.e. insecure. Allow Once and Block are useless in this case. So choose Allow.

If you go back into the clumsy firewall config interface to reset permissions to Outgoing, you have just closed an infinite loop, and you are condemned to repeat it until you accept an insecure setting, i.e. Full. A good workaround is to drag the nag box off the screen and ignore it.

So what am I doing wrong?

While you're at it, can anyone tell me how to sort the millions of programs in the permissions list alphabetically. Or just tell me when the firewall is finished.

Message was edited by: antevans on 22/11/10 07:46:18 CST
2 Replies
santi
Former Member
Message 2 of 3

Re: Firewall settings use case infinite loop question

I realise your post is a few months old but noticed no-one has responded. I am having the same issue as you with the pop-up and noticed you too have added a post to the thread

If you are still using McAfee and have the same issue, easiest way to ignore the pop-ups is to select  Alt + F4 to close the pop-up.

If you want to sort the list alphabetically, go to the top of the list and click on the 'Program' heading for A-Z, or click again for Z-A.  Similarly to sort by Access click on that heading.

antevans
Former Member
Message 3 of 3

Re: Firewall settings use case infinite loop question

Thanks, that's very sweet. It's not really the pop-up window that's the problem, although it is pretty annoying. The real problem is that this window encourages users to open incoming TCP connections to any random app. 'Allow Always' means 'Incoming', and there is no 'Outgoing' option, other than the one buried in the firewall setup.

This is more or less the opposite of what a firewall is supposed to do on an end user machine.

You are therefore better off with the Windows Firewall than with McAfee. If you have a hardware firewall or quasi firewall (usually a router using NAT), that helps.

See this thread: https://community.mcafee.com/message/161413

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