Applications getting around "blocked" status.

Hello there. This is my first post on your forum.
So the question I have is, often times an application that is blocked by firewall rules so that it can’t contact the internet directly, can in a sense get around this by opening up a web browser and going to a page of its choosing, presumably sending information it wants to send in the request, and subsequently opening whatever web page it wants to open. One example of this is when shareware programs that you have listed as a “blocked application” can open up internet explorer to go to their website page to give you offers. Or if you click on the help button forgetting that the only help files for the application are online and away it goes opening IE and its web pages.
To me this is highly troubling because if you don’t trust an application enough to not have it as a ‘blocked application’ then why wouldn’t it be a concern to allow that same application to go randomly opening webpages at it’s whim (on IE no less). Please someone tell me there is some way to prevent this. Thanks in advance.

Edit: Even though in my question I mention specifically internet explorer being used by such applications I’m looking for a solution that would stop it from using any browser or other third party software to connect to the internet. Just thought I should clarify that :slight_smile:

The firewall component only filters network traffic, what you’re describing is the need for a different control component in this case the HIPS aka Defense+, which would prevent an application from executing another application or among other actions to control access to the internet. You need to set HIPS to anything but disabled or training mode for it to take effect, then you should make a rule for the application in question to block execution of other programs such as web browsers so that it can’t get use that method to access the internet.

Heheh, I forgot about this question for quite awhile, but trying what you said seems to work. One frenium application that really liked to open webpages a lot now doesn’t seem to be able to, so big thanks 8) .

I do wonder how often it might be the case that people think they are safe because they isolated an application from having direct access to the internet but that application did something nefarious because it could use a web browser as a vector for it’s unwanted activities. For myself I have known how to do the former for a long time but just now am learning about how to stop the latter, so I imagine it could be a useful/prolific way for the software of attackers or shady companies to get around restrictions.