Hello,
I am a former user of Zone Alarm and I have a question about setting up Program permissions in CPF. With Zone Alarm, I needed to set internet access for Firefox but not server access and all worked fine. I believe that would be the same as setting OUT access but not IN access in CPF. My problem is that if I only set OUT access for Firefox and don’t set IN access, I can’t get access to internet sites. Can anyone shed some light on why that is?
Thanks in advance.
hlb
It’s probably just terminology issue between ZA & CPF. But, I’m not sure why you need to create any rules for Firefox. CPF would either pick it up as a trusted application (if you have the option set) or it would prompt for Firefox as it attempted access.
Firefox probably needs to act as a server because it is trying to check for updates for itself and/or its add-ons (depending on which version of Firefox you have).
Hi Kail,
Thanks for your response. Let me just say that I am really happy with the Comodo Personal Firewall. It is one great program.
When I was using Zone Alarm Security Suite, I would, as a general rule, never grant any program server rights to the internet. In fact, with Zone Alarm, there is a way to globally turn off server rights to the internet via a checked box. From reading the CPF documentation, I understand that “OUT” really means letting sites IN in response to a request by you, whereas “IN” really means letting sites IN without a request by you. It is my understanding that the latter is what server rights are, so “IN” really means internet server rights.
I am able to set the Firefox application rules to only “OUT” and it appears to be working now where it was not working before. I wonder if it was some sort of caching issue. In any case, my main concern was to have a better understanding of what the Application rules do and maybe others can learn from this as well.
hlb
I understand that Application Monitor rules can take time to propagate. So, this might have been the cause. I know after you have performed a scan for know applications, CPF recommends that it is restarted to enable the new rules. Of course, this might only apply to new rules.
If you look in CONNECTIONS (on the ACTIVITY screen in CPF), while Firefox is running, you should see several connections to 127.X.X.X. These are the internal connections that FF uses. I believe these are the connections that are acting as a server.
Hope this helps,
Ewen 
Hi panic,
That’s perfectly ok because those server connections are to the trusted localhost and not the internet.
hlb
I know - that’s the point I was making. FF is acting as a server, but only inside the boundaries of your PC.
Ewen