Yes. My firewall acts in the same way and I allowed Agent connection permissions. However, using Peer Guardian and block-lists is an additional secruity measure running at the same time as a firewall. And, the way the system is structured, block-lists have priority over fire-wall settings allow/disallow *application settings*. (There are other 'block-list' type applications around 'Proto-wall' is also popular.)

For example, I generally run my computer in such way as to disallow any connection to it via HTTP. If I want to, say, surf the web then I temporarily allow HTTP connections and disable again once finished. This is very easy to do with Peer Guardian as there is a 'toggle' in the app for this.

However, to preserve the extra 'global' security that have, if I want to permanently allow an HTTP connection for a specific address (without having to use a the global toggle on/off) then I can specify the address and still disallow all others. (Note the difference between 'allowing an application' which is what many popular firewalls monitor and 'allowing connections to specific addresses (or address ranges)' which is what block-list applications monitor.

The reason why I posted the comment here is that there might be other people who use Peer Guardian, or similar apps, and who, like me, initially forget to include the address in an 'allow list' (and hence processing time for a project like this is lost). So the problem manifests like this: People using a block-list app arrive at WGG website, download Agent, install and launch the Agent. Agent triggers firewall, user permits, Agent gets data and procedes to crunch. The user has done all this having allowed HTTP connections to visit the website in the first place. Eventually, the user finishings surfing the net and then disallows HTTP connections again - having overlooked the creation of an 'allow' for Agent within a 'block-list' 'white-list'. Six hours (or whatever) later Agent finishes current task, tries to connect and can't because the block-list won't allow the address even if the firewall would allow the application.


I suppose this amounts to a different topic now but but it is related to the above so: I'm surprised that I haven't seen a project like WCG mentioned at BitTorrent type websites. Seems to me that people that use peer-to-peer applications would be good targets, in 'marketing' terms, for WCG. Potentially I think there would be big rewards in processing time if even a fraction of them could be got onboard. There is a fair amount of agreement that people that use P-to-P leave their systems running for prolonged periods. However, running P-to-P in itself is not a particularly processor intensive activity. So, this kind of situation might be an ideal one in which to try and promote WCG: prolonged system up-time, very often overnight up-time, with the processor having little else to do other than monitor P-to-P connections and read/write small packets of disk data.

Downside of the above scenario is that P-to-P'ers are often a parnoid bunch (with fair justification) and hence run security measures that go further than just using a firewall. They may not like the idea of running an app that is not entirely open-source and hence can't be guaranteed to be entirely innocuous over whatever it may or may not be doing on a system. (For my own part I'm prepared to take the risk just to help medical research along. I do though have thoughts on this issue and on issues regarding commercial reward gained by companies on the back of exercise of altruism from ordinary folks and their computers.)

If there are any specific marketing campaigns to promote WGA I'd try focusing on BitTorrent sites - approach site owners for permanent mention/links at their websites - for the above stated reasons. At which point the inf. on 'block-lists' would be useful to include as a part of a download text file with Agent.