how to change windows 10 firewall settings – In Windows 10, Windows Firewall hasn’t changed much since Vista. Overall, it’s almost the same. Signing in to a program is blocked unless they are on the permitted list. Outbound connections are not blocked if they don’t match the rules. You also have Public and Private network profiles for firewalls and can control which programs can communicate on a private network as opposed to the Internet.
In this article, I will discuss various options and settings for the Windows 10 firewall and talk about how you can adjust them to suit your needs. Although outgoing connections are not blocked by default, you can configure your own firewall rules in Windows 10 to block outgoing connections. This can be useful if you want to block certain programs from communicating with the Internet, even if the program is installed without your consent.
To get started, let’s talk about opening firewall settings in Windows 10. You can open the Control Panel and open the firewall from there or you can click Start and type the word firewall. Look at the picture below
this will bring up the Windows Firewall dialog where you can control all the various settings for the firewall.
On the right hand side, it divides views into private and guest or public networks. Your home wireless network will appear under Private networks, but if not, then you might have to manually say that the network is a Home network and not a Public network.
ALLOW PROGRAMS THROUGH FIREWALL
The main reason most people will mess up a firewall is to allow programs to work through a firewall. Usually, this is automatically done by the program itself, but in some cases you have to do it manually. You can do this by clicking Allow applications or features through Windows Firewall.
As you can see, for each Windows program or feature, you can choose to allow incoming connections on private and public networks separately. This separation is useful for things like File and Printer Sharing and HomeGroups because we don’t want someone from public WiFi to be able to connect to a local share or HomeGroup network. To allow applications, just find in the list then check the box for the network type in which you want to allow incoming connections.
If the application is not listed, you can click the Allow other applications button and select it from the list or click the Browse button to find your program specifically. If the button is gray, click Change first setting.
If you return to the Firewall home dialog, there is another link in the left pane that is called Turn on or turn on Windows Firewall. If you click on it, you will get a series of options as shown below:
You can turn off the firewall in Windows 10 completely, but that will allow it all through the firewall. You can also block all incoming connections to your computer, even for permitted applications, which are useful in certain situations. For example, if you are in a public environment such as a hotel or airport and you want to be more secure when connected to a network. You can still surf the Internet using a web browser, but there are no programs that can make incoming connections from other computers on the local network or from servers on the Internet.
ADVANCED FIREWALL SETTINGS
The real fun, is if you want to mess around with advanced firewall settings. This is definitely not for the faint of heart, but it’s also not a big problem because you can click Restore Defaults and set everything back to normal when you installed Windows 10. To get the advanced settings, click the Advanced settings link in the left pane in the main dialog of the firewall. This will bring up Windows Firewall with an Advanced Security window:
On the main screen, this gives you a brief overview of your firewall settings for domains, private networks, and public networks. If your computer doesn’t join a domain, you don’t need to worry about that profile. You can quickly see how incoming and outgoing connections are managed by a firewall. By default, all outgoing connections are allowed. If you want to block outgoing connections, click Exit Rules in the left column.
Go ahead and click on New rules and you will get a dialog asking what type of rule.
I chose the port because I wanted to block all outgoing connections on port 80, the HTTP port used by every web browser. Based on the theory, it should block all Internet access in IE, Edge, Chrome and other browsers. Then click Next, select TCP and type the port number.
Click Next and select the action that you want to perform, in my case, Block connection.
Finally, select the profile you want the rule to apply as well. Maybe you should choose all profiles.
Now name it and that’s it! If I open Chrome to visit any web page, I get the following error message
Sweet! So I just created a new outbound connection rule in the Windows 10 firewall that is blocking port 80 and therefore prevents anyone from browsing the Internet! You can create your own custom firewall rules in Windows 10 following the steps I show above. Overall, that’s pretty much all there is in a firewall. You can do more advanced things, but I want to give a decent picture that even non-technical people can try to follow.:
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