Questions / Comments / Complaints about Features & Usage...
I've been usign F-secure for about 2 weeks and finding some difficulties - not sure if they are based on missing or hidden features or just the complexity of the product (I'm a 15yr career computer person)
Firewall:
1) I'd had to completely disable the F-Secure Firewall and use the one built-into Win7. When I enable the F-Secure firewall it blocks or slows things too much. Example: it does not allow streaming media even when I think the proper rules are in place (since I can get to the shares).
2) Managing / creating rules for Firewall is tedious, at best. Firewalls from AVST & MSFT are 10x easier to use and have more/better features.
F-Secure's Missing feratures:
a) cannot copy Firewall profiles to create new ones based on an existing one.
b) cannot assign a profile to a user
3) F-Secure Firewall detection is not 'smart' - does not see when another firewall is being used. I use MSFT and F-Secure tells me my computer is not protected, firewall is not on.
4) HUGE missing feature... no user defined domain blocklist (blacklist). I could not find a way to specify a way to block specific URLs/domains. This is a must have IMO.
Application control:
F-Secure's Missing feratures:
a) Cannot assign control per user, per application
General navigation:
too many clicks no matter where you want to do... too many menus. opening the Notification icon should open a the main window, not a panel that then opens the main window anyway.
Example... no direct access to open Tasks, takes 4 clicks just to get to the Tasks menu - shuold have direct access from Notification icon
Comments
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I too had immense problems with F-secure's firewall and in fact I found it so difficult to completely disable, I've had to uninstall the entire FS IS 2011 package and replace it with MSE until a solution is found.
Strangely enough, I've experienced no such problems on my Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit system (this one), only on my laptop running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit - where the file 'fsdfwd.exe' crippled it by totally monopolising the CPU all the time the machine was on.
It would be nice to think that this glitch could be fixed fairly soon, so I can once again use FS IS 2011 that I paid good money for.
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Hi,
1) you must understand how the firewall works. If you have modified one of the prdefined rulesets, please post it here, so that we can see if they need some more changes.
2a) The design is based on service definitions that are grouped to rulesets. So if you add a service for each port you simply start it the wrong way. There is a rulset (userdefined) where you can start from scratch, otherwise simply add your rules to the top of one of the existing ones. I do not really see a benefit in first creating a copy.
2b) we are talking about system security not user security. So the firewall is set up by the administrator once.
3) If you do not like the firewall just buy AVonly. F-Secure disables MS-FW on instalation and uninstalls any conflicting other firewall. If you install a 3rd party FW on top you should know what you are doing.
4) install with parental control and chose the child-profile.
5) AppControl only controlls access of an Application to the Network nothing else!
6) "too many clicks" - others ruled "easy to use". The software is designed for the normal consumer not for a high end professional that should rather use the professional version
my2ct
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Matthias
You have made it clear there are many things F-Secure cannot do and probably will not. It is made for a low-level basic user, not for mid to advanced level users. This is fine, I will look at other products that are more flexible and have ore features.
thank you for your time.
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Hi Aaron and Mothballs,
can I still just verify that did you have these issues with F-Secure IS2011 or with the Technology Preview TP3#?
With the new Technology Preview, we have 1 confirmed error where user cannot get the firewall to work properly without changing to "Allow all" profile. But I'm not aware of other "total failures" in speed or connectivity, so I would be very interested in knowing more about your cases.
Petri
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Aaron,
the points where you state "does not work" are still of interest and should be looked into to improve the software. So please create a fsdiag and open a support case on that. (point to this thread!)
it might still be of interest for the product owner to learn about your use cases for the features you asked for. Please explain in more detail why you need those "flexibility" for the configuration? usually you define one setup and leave it. What benefit do you expect in assigning different rulesets for different users? what role do these useres have?
Did you try paraental control?
finally give TP3x a chance to see if that improves your situation.
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I only have 64bit Win7 OSes so I cannot say for others.
Firewall causes major problems for me. Blocks items and slows down many others. Biggest issue is streaming video where the firewall blocks it completely in Normal - so I turned the firewall completely off as I cound not find any rules that allowed it to work proerly and I don't have time to tinker with 10 different things that could be causing the problem. If I can navigate to a windows share I should be able to stream video from it without problems on a gig network.
Just like Parental Controls can be customized (change the level of blocking) per user doing the same for Software/Applications is necessary. I may want to be able to run an app that I do not want my wife/kids/etc to run.
I also need the ability to specify domains to block - 2 reasons
1) block specific sites for specific people - say I don't want one of my kids going to disney.com but I want myself, another child, or my wife to be able to.
2) block advertising sites - helps speed up browsing
... All or nothing solutions don't work well.
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Hi Aaron,
Aaron wrote:Firewall causes major problems for me. Blocks items and slows down many others. Biggest issue is streaming video where the firewall blocks it completely in Normal - so I turned the firewall completely off as I cound not find any rules that allowed it to work proerly and I don't have time to tinker with 10 different things that could be causing the problem. If I can navigate to a windows share I should be able to stream video from it without problems on a gig network.
Ok, just to make sure that I have fully understood your use case and problem:
1. You have some avi, mpg, etc. files on different Windows file server share.
2. You browse to file share from the computer where F-Secure is installed.
3. And you try to play them with some player from the computer where F-Secure is installed.
And if you have the firewall on, this fails completely? And if your turn the firewall off, it works just fine?This scenario should work without any problems on Normal security level (no additional changes needed). I'm not aware of this kind of "global problem" in our firewall, but I'll try to reproduce this on similar Win 7 64-bit setup with both IS2011 and TP36. Anyway, many this kind of problems are very often hardware/driver specific, so we would need your help on fixing it, if I cannot reproduce it. This would mean delivering debug binaries of firewall, taking them into use and then reproducing the problem and then sending the debug logs for analysis to us.
Aaron wrote:Just like Parental Controls can be customized (change the level of blocking) per user doing the same for Software/Applications is necessary. I may want to be able to run an app that I do not want my wife/kids/etc to run.
Ok, I now understand your use case. Though I think you can do that quite easily with the user rights management in Windows 7 and Vista. Create install folder with limited access rights, install all apps that you want control to that folder and you are done.
Aaron wrote:
I also need the ability to specify domains to block - 2 reasons1) block specific sites for specific people - say I don't want one of my kids going to disney.com but I want myself, another child, or my wife to be able to.
2) block advertising sites - helps speed up browsing
... All or nothing solutions don't work well.
I'm still not sure, if you tried the new TP or IS2011, so I want to highlight this: The new TP version includes totally redone browsing protection and parental control and the major change in it is, that all the configurations are now based on the windows users. So you can configure above things per user in it (which you cannot do in IS2011) pretty soon with it (blocking specific sites feature is coming most likely in TP37 in 2 weeks time).
Thanx a lot for the feedback so far, it has been really useful.
Petri
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Hi Aaron,
is this Streaming issue related to Windows 7 Homegroup? If yes, there needs to be setup some rules to make it work:
http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/support/article/kba/15467/k/home/p/3
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Petri,
I've been using TP36. I've been streaming video from my office "server" (multi-use desktop Win7 x64) for years and have tried multiple AV/security apps. Over the past year or so... MSFT Security Essentials, AVAST 6, BitDefender 2011, F-Secure 2011, TP36. The only apps I had problem streaming video with is F-secure 2011 & TP36. I uninstalled and cleaned registry last night and will reinstall when you release TP37.
I'm looking for the most complete and easy to use solution including AV, firewall, email protection, site protection, parental controls, etc. I use PeerBlock to block unwanted domains using community knowledge and it works well but I'd like to see a solution that would use these block lists so I did not need to run PeerBlock - including adding user specific sites to block (advertising sites, unwanted misc sites for kids, etc).
To be 100% upfront and not trynig to be mean, so far - AVAST has the most complete, feature rich, and easy to use solution. They have everything I have mentioned above and more. They even have sandboxing which works very well.
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This is the big question from your earlier post it says F-Secure firewall on and off in the settings menu. Then what happens if I go into wanting to change settings it sends me to change the windows 7 firewall settings? I am very confused as to what is going on? What is the F-Secure firewall component suppopsed to look like? The reason I am asking is because I did a Firewall leak test and it failed saying that the test program can reach outside servers? Please someone enlighten me? This is F-Secure Tech Preview Windows Beta. Thanks in Advance.
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Hi
This is just a feedback. And not a complain.
I think most users prefer FS 2012 Firewall as compare to FS 2013.
They like F-Secure 2012 firewall.
They are familar with it.
Nobody likes Micro$oft firewall. With Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows XP.
They are not comfortable with the rule set.
F-Secure 2013. It kinda slow when they use the F-Secure DNS enable.
Some ISPs are having issues when having F-Secure DNS enable in F-Secure 2013.
Their Internet Connection drag then down.
It gobbles alot of memory.
I've seen the PCMAG review on FS 2013.
In a way, PCMAG states correctly.
When in the Task Manager Process the FS 2013 active process should not be so easy to terminate.
Please review the article below.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411682,00.asp
Then you got the picture what they are trying to say.
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Rich,
In your WIndows 7 Firewall. You need to tick Block Incoming.
Goto Control Panel, Firewall, Turn Windows Firewall On and Off.
Select Block Incoming Connection and Notify me for both Private and Public settings.
Restart your Windows.
As for the leaktest.
When you run the leaktest program.
F-Secure 2013 Deep Guard will prompt you to either allow or block.
You have to block it.
Block it. You know. If you allow it will FAIL.
If you block it. It will pass.
I have tested it my self.
I block it and it pass the test.
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