Still totally confused on the act as a server choices

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The recent version of comodo seems to be doing a good job in protecting both my computers on a two computer lan using ICS.—and no proxy settings. Set up for comodo was very easy with the various wizards—and I seem to be able to where I want to with nothing blocked with a false negatives by comodo. And I am still in learning mode.

Its may be somewhat a legacy of my prior firewall–which was sygate----but I am totally confused on what to do when I hit the do I want to allow this, that, and the other program to act as a server.–or also to access the internet. Nor can I find anything in help that addresses the question.

With my previous firewall—sygate—you wanted these known programs to access the internet—but you had no firewall security if you allowed the applications to act as servers–and in fact the only program that needed to act as a server was callwave—which is an internet telephone answering machine for us folks stuck on dial up.—but here I am talking various programs like web browsers, security programs, adobe, and the like that often have to receive internet updates.

For NOW—when prompted by comodo-- I allow any known safe programs to access the internet and I check the remember this setting button first—and when comodo prompts me regarding act as a server I do allow it but don’t check the remember this setting box.

And for now I seem to have two problems (1) Comodo does not seem to always remember which programs I allowed to access the internet after checking remember—so I get prompted again—and again—and again–especially when another trusted program calls another trusted program–a typical example might be iobit–which is a disk defragmenter–and if I use it to visit its forum—it calls internet explorer—which I seldom use–but still allow to access the internet. (2) I still am totally confused on what programs I should allow to act as a server—I note there is a thread that partially addresses the question regarding Opera—and mumbled something about ticking the loopback setting I was previously warned against checking—so overall I am more confused than I was before.

So can someone please direct me to the help section that addresses this—or help give me a mental handle so I do know what to do—as I would like to get comodo nailed down and out of learning mode—so I don’t have to deal with constant comodo prompts.

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@Osage:

I think CFP’s repeated notification is due to the app in question being invoked by different parents.

If you are sure that the app is safe, you can manually specify the allow rule:

  1. Open CFP > Security > Application Monitor
  2. Find the app’s entry
  3. Right-click > Edit
  4. Choose “Skip Parent Check”
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Please see my reply on the 2nd pic on this 'act as a server’: It’s the loopback connection check. If you don’t run a proxy server, then it’s safe to enable the skipping of this check.

As for why it doesn’t seem to “remember” your choice, it could be like pepoluan stated about the parent check (i.e. a different executable launched your program) and it could also be that your program connected to different IP addresses and/or ports (which can be toned down if you set the security alert level to the default low).

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Something else to note on the “act as a server” thing… part of the confusion is the phrase used meaning different things with different software.

Some firewalls have used that phrase, and in that scenario it means that the application is connected invisibly to the internet (thus meaning you would have no control over it).

CFP, when giving this message, simply means that the application is preparing to connect; it does not mean that it is connected at that moment. You might think of this is akin to “listening,” that is, that it is waiting for a prompt to access a given port and receive communication.

LM