ashsimpl.exe has only recently started asking to have permission to access the internet.
Should I allow it?
what does it do?
why has it only recently asked for permission (ie possible reasons)?
ashsimpl.exe is the simple user interface. It does not need internet access. Why it would try, I don’t know.
What is your firewall ?
It may be that the question you are being asked is different than simply connecting to the internet.
I have never been asked permission to connect to the internet for this process. However if you do a manual update, via the Simple User Interface it has to call the update process and it may be what your firewall is saying it is controlling another process that is connecting to the internet.
I have Comodo Firewall pro and it is saying
parent process - iexplore.exe
and that ashsimpl.exe is trying to connect through it
see attached
ps this came up when I started the main interface of Avast while connected to the internet
What were you doing in the simple user interface (SUI) when this happened ?
For instance if I open the menu and click Select Skin, there is an option to get more skins, if I click that it fires up IE (which really grips me as I hate IE). So in this case it would be similar to the circumstances in your image, the ashsimpl.exe launching IE to open the skins page in avast.com.
In order to do this it would also have to get the IP adress from a DNS server, something listed in the image, a reverse IP lookup shows this IP belongs to Tiscallnet.it, is this your ISP.
Personally I don’t think there is anything untoward, but that totally depends on what you were doing in the SUI at the time.
I think your settings may be too sensitive in comodo and that can be reduced, sorry I can’t say how I don’t use comodo firewall.
I was say that it does not need connection rights, but, thanks to David, he seems correct when he says: