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