One of the most useful features of CF consists in showing a Firewall Alert when an “unknown” application tries to access the Internet.
I know that those alerts disappear as soon as I choose one of the available options (allow, block…) and I also know that CF can “remember” the chosen option by creating specific application rules and adding them to its settings.
There is, however, something I’m not able to figure out:
how can I just… close a Firewall Alert, without choosing any of available options?
Why would you want to do that? The alert is telling you that an unknown process is trying to access the Internet, you can allow it or block it - but why would you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend you’d never seen it?
In addition
Just uncheck the box “remember my answer”
Then click on “Block only”
Next time the alert will appear again on the same PID
If the alert has been logged, simply delete the program rule in the firewall settings
I forgot that often, in Internet forums, when you ask how to do something you also have to explain why you want to do it …
Anyway, I’m not wanting to “stick my head in the sand” (??).
More simply, while experimenting with some safe programs which I know very well (not“unknown” at all), sometimes I’d like the firewall to… leave a program alone, without interfering. I want the firewall to be active (so that any attempt from other programs can be detected) and to show me its alerts, so that I can see when a particular program tries to access the Internet and what IP it is trying to access, but in certain cases I don’t want the firewall to take any action.
That’s the reason for my question.
I know I can do that, I’ve done it a lot of times.
That is not, however, what I need, because clicking on “Block only” I still get an action from the firewall, which actually, as the command says, “blocks” the program.
While I would like to just close the alert window, with no action from the firewall at all.
When you say “any Software” I suppose you mean “any firewall software”…
Anyway, in the end, it seems clear that CF developers have decided to make it impossible, for the user, to answer to an alert by saying to the program “thanks for your useful warning but don’t worry, don’t do anything”. No doubt they had good reasons for making such a choice, even if in some cases it can be binding.
Another question could arise:
what happens if the user just ignores the alert window, leaving it open without clicking anywhere on it? What does CF do in such a case?
Because the firewall can’t have a no action state. A ‘Null’ answer is the same a deny, when a firewall runs in default deny, rather then default allow (more potential leaks).
To answer your question, after the alert timer expires, it will apply the default mode, being either default allow, or default deny, depending on the firewall. For Comodo the default is deny.
What your asking for it an impossibility, for any operation system, it has to do something with the packet. Either process it (accept), or disregard it (drop & clean buffers). The don’t do anything your asking for is a memory leak.