What are you using to control the network traffic in and out of your PC?

I got so tired of Native Instruments 'calling home' activities that I finally decided to something about it.
With a bit over 900 VSTs and maybe 50 standalones I know that I have other plugins that will do these attempts, so it's not just for NI.
And on top of that all the other softwares that collects data and tries to send it without my permission.

The one that ticked my boxes was Windows Firewall Control which uses the built-in firewall and adds some nice extras and features to it - along with a user friendly interface and it's really easy to understand and work with.
It's one of those: Oh why didn't I find and install this the same day I installed my PC.

One of the features I really liked was to name your groups.
So i named one Music, antother one Games, then Tools, Check up, and Crucial - so I can easily sort them and get a good overview.



(Note to myself, use the BBcode link from imgur)








Windows Firewall Control (WFC) by Binisoft/Malwarebytes
https://www.binisoft.org/wfc

User guide PDF:
https://www.binisoft.org/pdf/guides/...User-Guide.pdf

Video tutorial:
Take Full Control Of Windows Firewall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iqBvyf6vwU

Comprehensive (currently 285 pages) thread about this software:
Wilders Security Forums Windows Firewall Control WFC by BiniSoft
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre...47370/page-285

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My personal settings:

DASHBOARD
- Windows Firewall state: On
- Inbound connections: Block
- Outbound connections: Block
- Connected to location: Private

PROFILES
Medium Filtering (recommended)

NOTIFICATIONS
Display notifications - (In order to see what is actually happening and personally control the traffic to/from my PC)

Automatic close a notification: 999 seconds (maximum)

OPTIONS
Shell Integration: On

Start automatically at user logon: Off (I can see situations like big updates/installations where the PC might need full internet access. So I've made a clearly visible WFC shortcut on my desktop instead)

RULES
Outbound (recommended)

Domain: On
Private: On
Public: On

SECURITY
Secure Rules: On
- Disable unauthorized rules

TOOLS
Default settings

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Notes:
- Before I installed WFC I created a restore point just in case
- The first thing after installing WFC was to go to Options and 'Export user settings to a file'
- Then go to Rules and 'Export Windows Firewall rules to a file'

The only thing that takes a bit longer time than I expected is when WFC imports your current firewall rules.
That took about five minutes and for a while there I thought that it had become totally unresponsive and I was almost about to end the process.
But luckily I didn't, and WFC came back to life by itself. So I guess these firewall rules is quite a bit of info to be processed for the computer, and maybe it has to do with a combination of processes that has to be done for each rule.
Otherwise it would only have taken a cpl of seconds rather than minutes.

And creating rules, especially if you choose a couple of entries at once - it takes a couple of seconds. But then you see a progress bar, so you'll know whats going on.

A couple of notifications I've had so far:
NTKDaemon (even though I haven't got any NI hardware installed or NI software running), smartscreen.exe (this popped up when I started Cherry Audios GX-80), officec2rclient, sdxhelper, taskhostw, pingsender (Mozilla telemetry, even though my Mozilla wasn't running atm - a bit suspicious imo), windowspackagemanagerserver (WinGet), webview2 (Edge), photosapp.exe

I think I will block all Xbox related stuff, because you don't need'em unless you have a Xbox, right?
Also all Windows Media Center and Microsoft Zune are safe to block if you only use other media players, correct? Personally I use VLC

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Another video tutor from the same guy as above; A couple of Windows 11 telemetry, data collecting, "call home"s and other privacy concerns to easily block
Use Windows Firewall To Stop Microsoft Spying On You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XXmb5HuMh8

An alternative to WFC which I also considered is Simplewall
EXCELLENT FREE WINDOWS FIREWALL | Simplewall Guide
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEpUDhgPVSA

But so far I've settled with WFC because it suites my needs better, and to be frank I found Simplewall (despite its name) to be harder to get started with.
I couldn't even find the installation file, so I guess it's one of those where you have to type a command to install it.
And I'm not a big fan of that. But the video is very educational nevertheless, so it's worth watching anyway.

I always store my documents/pictures etc locally, so Onedrive should also be safe to block?

Have you noticed any improvement in DAW performance / CPU load etc, or is it purely the privacy angle that motivated you here?

So far mainly privacy.

I'm not in a rush, so I go about it carefully and avoid blocking things until I'm 100% certain that it wont cause any issues.

That's one of the reasons I created this thread, to find out more.

The group named '5-Crucial by T11' I made for system files and similar.
The 'Check up' one is for things that I'm uncertain about or things that are on my to-do-list.

The number in the beginning of every group name is for quick access and easy sorting only to make it extra easy for me to find things quickly and speed up my workflow.
(Only exception is the group I named 'Microsoft crap' just for the telemetry stuff mentioned earlier.)