I am new to avast. my understanding is that the avast free web shield needs to be disabled to use an outbound firewall otherwise all outbound traffic is allowed out through avast regardless of your firewall rules. So am I better off with
inbound firewall & web shield enabled or
in/outbound firewall & web shield disabled
I have gone with the outbound firewall for now – online armor free. Mostly because of posts on wildersecurity indicating when avast web shield is off the file shield eventually catches everything the web shield would have caught anyway – is this true? What am I missing with the web shield off – script scaning… i’ve recently started doing a lot of surfing through foreign government websites for work and these are often infected so want to make sure I’m covered as much as possible.
Also, this is on a laptop, but it’s usually behind a NAT router so according to some i don’t need a software firewall at all - wide range of opinions on this topic…
I am new to avast. my understanding is that the avast free web shield needs to be disabled to use an outbound firewall otherwise all outbound traffic is allowed out through avast regardless of your firewall rules. So am I better off with
wrong ..... webshield and firewalls are two different thing
Besides avast! changing its methods to filter info through AvastSvc.exe process since version 9.0.2009
We have finally fully rewritten the WebShield so that it now doesn't work as a "transparent proxy" anymore. I.e. no more routing of all HTTP traffic through the AvastSvc.exe process - which should hopefully result in no more conflicts with various firewalls (especially older firewalls that can't handle transparent proxies) and overall improvement in stability and performance.
Also most firewalls have adapted. So I don’t think you would have any trouble running avast! Web Shield with any of the most popular firewalls
when was version 9.0.2009 released? The website for “Windows 7 Firewall Controller” still states that it does not work with Avast and other Av’s like it and has a link to a Wildersecurity thread on the outbound firewall issue – is there still an issue with windows 7 firewall outbound rules with avast or is the info their website out of date.
There’s also a 2013 thread on the online armor forum with a post from a senior member that essentially says to disable avast web shield with online armor – “What Avast does when the web shield is enabled is to route all web request through it’s own process. So instead of connecting to an IP on the internet, a program accessing the web will connect to the Avast web shield proxy process instead. The actual internet access is then done from the Avast proxy process, that you most likely allowed to access the internet. There is no real solution for this problem as the way Avast chose to implement the web shield is just inherently incompatible with any software firewall.” – From what I’ve read on the avast forum link you sent this statement seems to be incorrect – online armor always worked with avast as long as both are ‘excluded’ from each other and “intercept loopback interface” is enabled in online armor.
If I recall correctly avast! 9 was released last year in October.
This all issue started with Windows Firewall and Comodo, then I believe Private Firewall, and only in Windows 7.
I know members in this forum and others running OA and Outpost who did not report any problems related to the way avast! worked as a proxy so thier firewalls were blocking outbound conn.
I also know that Comodo fixed this problem with version 5.12. However since I do not run Win 7 or CIS 7, I can not be sure if everything is still right.
I could not tell you what you have to do to run OA since I do not run it myself. may be another member in the forum can add something the the topic.
Now. The only way to know for sure if it works or not is to try it out.
any good references on how to test outbound firewalls reliably?? i have the web shield running now and every program i’ve tried blocking is not able to get out - anything else to test?
A good self test would be to block a program ( your browser ) and see if it connects. Also GRC has multiples ways to test not only your firewall but other security items too.
with avast’s web shield on i’ve run the leaktest on grc.com a few times changing names, in stealth, etc… and it was not able to connect. Also no programs i’ve blocked with OA have been able to connect.
so it looks like outbound traffic is being blocked appropriately with web shield on
thanks for your help guys!!
windows 7 sp1, avast free 2014.9.0.2018, online armor free 7.0.0.1866
