Some users reported a bug where GlassWire would make it difficult for their computer to sleep when not in use. This GlassWire update fixes that sleep problem, along with some other optimizations to help GlassWire run more efficiently.
Thank you for reporting the sleeping bug in our forum, and in our uninstall reports.
A Million GlassWire Downloads!
We at GlassWire are excited to announce we reached our first million downloads after launching this project one year ago. I remember how scary it was to release something that we had worked so hard on and not knowing if anyone would use it at all. It was a relief when people started using GlassWire and learning all kinds of interesting things about their network activity.
We’d like to thank our users for helping to spread the word about our software, letting us know about bugs, exploring new feature ideas, and participating in our forum. Also thank you to the different writers, websites, fans, partners, and Twitter users that gave us a chance when we were new and wrote about us. Here’s to many million more users for GlassWire in the future!
GlassWire 1.1.26b Released
GlassWire 1.1.26b is now available for download.
What’s new?
It’s annoying enough when apps phone home without your permission but now Windows itself phones home to Microsoft. To block apps from phoning home it’s easy to use GlassWire and block them, but blocking Windows from phoning home is a bit more complicated. Unfortunately it’s not easy to see or understand what data is being sent to Microsoft or why it is being sent there.
With Windows 10 the default settings give permission to send Microsoft a lot of data including the ability to grab your calendar, contacts, input data, location data, smart screen URL filtering and much more. Also if you’re using Windows 7 or 8 you may have already installed updates that also send data back to Microsoft.
Fortunately by making some changes to Windows you can regain some privacy.
Windows 7 & 8
If you’re using Windows 7 or 8 you can disable the tracking by removing several optional Windows updates you may have installed. If you didn’t install these optional updates then you may not have the tracking turned on at all. Go to your control panel and then choose “System and Security” then “Windows Update”. Next choose “View update history” and then click “Installed Updates”. At the top right you can “Search Installed Updates” then look for update KB3022345. This update adds the Windows Telemetry service to your PC so you may want to click it and uninstall that update. Another related update is KB3075249 that adds more Telemetry services to Windows 7 & 8 PCs. This ArsTechnica article has more information about the Windows 7 & 8 updates and what they do, and more details on how to remove them.
Windows 10
For Windows 10 if you’re using the Pro version the fastest way to disable Windows Telemetry is to launch gpedit.msc as administrator by right clicking it and choosing “Run as Administrator” after searching for it. Next go through Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Data Collection and Preview Builds. Double click Telemetry, choose “Disabled”, then “Apply” it.
Unfortunately non-Pro Windows users can’t use gpedit to disable Telemetry, but there is still a lot you can do. Fortunately several tech websites have made detailed articles about all the Windows 10 tracking components, what they do, and how to disable them. We recommend studying this Howtogeek article, this ArsTechnica article, and this Lifehacker article to understand your Windows 10 privacy options in detail.
And of course don’t forget to install the latest version of GlassWire so you can visually see with the graph what data is going to Microsoft or others you may not know about.
Get GlassWire Today!
Download GlassWire’s free version or buy GlassWire Basic, Pro or Elite if you haven’t already.
GlassWire 1.1.21b is now available for download. The previous version of GlassWire already worked great with Windows 10, but this version has some user interface updates to better match Windows 10 along with some other changes.
What’s new?
Are you using the Google Chrome browser on a Windows PC when using your VPN service? If so you may be exposing your real IP to the websites you visit.
WebRTC is a standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium that supports real-time communications inside your browser. For example if you video chat or do audio calls in your browser and you don’t have Adobe Flash installed then you’re probably using WebRTC.
Unfortunately javascript placed on a web page you visit can use WebRTC to get your real IP address. This WebRTC exposure javascript is now so widely used now that even the New York Times uses it to gather local IP addresses.
You can check to see if your browser is leaking your IP by visiting the Browserleaks.com WebRTC page. To stop WebRTC from leaking your IP with Chrome the only fix seems to be with a Chrome extension called Scriptsafe that unfortunately doesn’t seem to be rated very well.
With Firefox you can type in about:config in the address bar, then go to media.peerconnection.enabled and set it to false. Don’t use a VPN? Then it still may be a good idea to disable WebRTC if you have no plans to use it.
We at GlassWire recommend Private Internet Access VPN service. Sign up today and get 58% off. We’re an affiliate of PIA so when you sign up you also support GlassWire.
If you haven’t updated your computer or software in awhile, now is a good time to do so. On July 5th an Italian company called Hacking Team had 400 gigabytes of their confidential data posted to the public by an unknown individual. If Hacking Team was a normal tech company this breach probably wouldn’t matter to you. Unfortunately Hacking Team’s business was to create malware for governments and law enforcement agencies so they could monitor the communications of Internet users.
When the breach went public Wikileaks set up a way to search all of the breached Hacking Team emails. If you or your company has a popular software product or service you may want to search the database for your product name just in case.
After security researchers began to go through the Hacking Team data in detail they began to find many different zero-day vulnerabilities for many different things. For example Adobe Flash and Internet Explorer both had unknown vulnerabilities that Hacking Team was selling to governments and law enforcement organizations to monitor people of interest.
Can the Hacking Team breach cause problems for you? Yes it can if you don’t update your computer and software to the latest versions. Now that the zero-day vulnerabilities are public knowledge it’s possible for other malicious groups to start using these vulnerabilities for malware and spyware.
Today is a good day to run Windows update along with updating Adobe Flash if you haven’t already. Also, it may not be a bad idea to uninstall Flash and get rid of it completely. We blogged about ways to remove Flash yet still access Flash content several months ago. And of course using GlassWire to keep an eye on your network activity is another great way to see what your computer is doing over the network.
We’re excited to announce that the new advanced featured versions of GlassWire is now available for purchase!
GlassWire has a longer graph history and allow more remote connections along with many new features. Having a longer graph history allows you to keep your network data for a longer period of time. With our new multiple remote connections feature you can monitor many remote computers and servers simultaneously.
One of the most requested features from GlassWire users was the ability to allow or deny new connections. “Ask to connect” prompts you before any new network connection is allowed with your computer. You can then allow or deny the connection. Not sure about the connection? Go to GlassWire’s Firewall tab and click the icon of the application that is asking to call out. Learn more about it and scan it with your antivirus.
If you’re leaving your computer for awhile “Block all” mode allows you to block all incoming and outgoing connections. Go to the GlassWire firewall tab then choose the “Block all” option to turn on this feature. Visit our Ask to connect section on the order page to see how these two new awesome features work.
Another feature GlassWire fans have requested was an easy way to see the graph without having to open up the entire GlassWire application.
Go to the top left GlassWire menu and choose “Show Mini Viewer” to see a mini graph that appears on your desktop at all times. You can also mouse over the mini graph and click its settings icon to make the graph transparent.
Have you ever wanted to know who all was connected to your network or WiFi? Go to GlassWire’s new “Network” tab to see who all is there. Go to the GlassWire settings to get alerted when new devices join or leave the network. If you someone on your network shouldn’t be there, update your WiFi password or secure your network access points.
Some other new security features we included are GlassWire alerts when your webcam or microphone is accessed by an application. Check out the alert then click the icon of the application that is accessing your webcam or mic. See if it’s something you initiated, or if it’s something that could be a security threat.
GlassWire’s major new release also includes new skins for the graph so you can choose more interesting color schemes, plus you can now hide network activity from some applications on the graph.
For example if you run some type of multimedia server from your PC or from a remote server and it’s constantly sending bandwidth that makes the GlassWire graph more difficult to understand we have a solution.
You can go to the GlassWire “Graph” tab then click “Apps” then click the app icon for the app you want to hide, then choose “hide app”. Once the app is hidden its data will no longer appear on the main graph window.
Thank you for all your support and we hope you’ll upgrade to GlassWire Basic, Pro, and Elite so we can continue to make improvements for the GlassWire community.
Before purchasing GlassWire Basic, Pro, or Elite first be sure you’re using the latest version of GlassWire that’s available on our download page.
Please note that our original free GlassWire features are still available for free and we have only added more new features for our paying users.
You’re welcome to continue to use our free software with our original free features as long as you want but we hope you’ll find our paid features are worth upgrading to.
GlassWire 1.0.44b is now available for download. This update is signed with a new SHA256 certificate plus it also has some minor bug fixes.
Due to the new certificate some GlassWire could potentially see some issues. One issue some users have reported is a Microsoft Smartscreen desktop alert. This alert will appear as a large bar across the screen after you try to double click our installer. The second issue is a “Windows requires a digitally signed driver” error that may appear if you use Windows 7 and you haven’t yet upgraded to Service Pack 1 yet. To solve this problem please run Windows update and you shouldn’t see this error again.
If you’re seeing any other errors please let us know via email or please join our forum.
GlassWire 1.0.40b is now available for download. With this software update we focused on improving GlassWire’s memory usage. If you still feel GlassWire’s memory usage is high after this update please try clearing your history and see if that solves the problem.
To clear your history in GlassWire go to the top left “GlassWire” menu and choose “Settings” then press the “clear” button.
This update also has many other minor improvements and bug fixes.
GlassWire 1.0.38b is now available for download. This new update includes even more language options like Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean. Go to the top left “GlassWire” menu to choose your preferred language.
We have also made many other improvements to GlassWire including making GlassWire display properly for high resolution monitors, fixing a problem where remote connections did not work for some users, adding a new ability to mute specific desktop notifications under settings/security, and more detailed DNS change information as requested by users. This GlassWire update also has many other bug fixes and optimizations.
Thank you for reporting problems to us so we can continue to improve GlassWire. If you have feedback please email us or post in our forum.
Download GlassWire 1.0.38b now!
Lately we hear about new Adobe Flash vulnerabilities almost every single day. It has become tiresome to update your own Adobe Flash version, let alone to try to get your family members and friends to do the same. If you’re an administrator of a large number of computers then I’m sure all these updates are making your life miserable.
We at GlassWire also became tired of constantly updating Flash and we decided to permanently remove it from all our devices, and guess what? It’s actually not a big deal to no longer have Flash installed. In fact we found that living without Adobe Flash is easy!
Did you know that the latest versions of IE and Google Chrome come with Flash built in? Obviously we aren’t major Chrome fans for obvious reasons and we recommend using Firefox as your primary browser, but you can keep Chrome on your Mac or PC just to use Flash if you need it.
You may be wondering why it’s safe to use the built in Flash in Chrome/IE, but it’s not safe to have Adobe Flash installed on your operating system. The quick answer to that question is that it may not always be 100% safe to use Flash in Chrome even though it’s sandboxed for your protection. We recommend you set all your browsers including Chrome to “click to play” mode. Bryan Krebs has a useful article that explains how to set up “click to play” on the major operating systems and browsers. “Click to play” turns Flash off by default where you must “click” to turn it on. If there is an exploit out there then it makes it less likely to automatically exploit your computer when you’re set to “click to play” but even with “click to play” on it’s possible to get tricked into playing something that’s unsafe.
Fortunately we found that not having Flash on our computers doesn’t matter much these days. Recently Youtube switched all their movies by default to HTML5 so you can still play Youtube as usual. Due to most mobile devices not having Flash installed you’ll find most modern browsers can play the vast majority of media out there without having Flash installed at all. Do you often come across videos you can’t play on your mobile device? If not then it’s likely you won’t miss anything on your PC or Mac either.
Now the last thing to do after reading this is actually uninstall Flash. Go to add/remove programs in Windows or your Mac settings, or check out these instructions.
Try living without Flash and we think you’ll find it’s great, plus no more annoying updates. Please comment here and let us know your results of living Flash-free and please don’t even get us started on Java. We assume you already uninstalled that one by now.
GlassWire 1.0.35b is now available for download. This new update allows you to use GlassWire in many different languages including German, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese!
To switch to a different language go to the top left GlassWire menu and choose “Language” to see what options are available. After you choose your new language option GlassWire will ask to restart, then GlassWire will begin working in your new chosen language.
GlassWire 1.0.35b also has many other security improvements and bug fixes.
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