- Dec 29, 2014
- 1,711
I don't want to overstate, but I always thought UAC was like a Romper Room PC behavior monitor compared to a solid firewall. If someone is not running one of the modern a-v/firewall combinations or a combination of a/v and firewall, I could see how the combination of Windows firewall and UAC would be at least comforting. However, a-v and Windows firewall is risky, even with UAC enabled. This is because UAC is not very specific in many cases with information about what is happening on the system. Also, the behaviors being monitored are limited in comparison to a good security firewall like Comodo.
I say go with a good a-v/firewall combo and either turn UAC off or leave it on a low setting. Or you can run a-v + Windows firewall + UAC and live with the results. UAC is too inflexible and comes across like an ineffective behavior monitor portion of a firewall to me. I have it turned off for that reason.
BTW, I use Private Firewall, which I know is not the best (and is no longer being updated ), but there is a setting for every behavior/connection to generate a pop up. I use this setting and from there I can decide whether to allow once/block once/allow every time/block every time. Same applies to internet connections. Maybe that's similar to UAC, but PF gives easy access to the settings if I change my mind. Wish it were easier, so I could, for example, set an entire behavior to "ask" (like keyboard monitoring) system wide rather than just for each process one at a time. Over two years I've gotten fairly used to using PF, though, and I feel it's much more configurable than the Windows options of UAC + Windows firewall
I say go with a good a-v/firewall combo and either turn UAC off or leave it on a low setting. Or you can run a-v + Windows firewall + UAC and live with the results. UAC is too inflexible and comes across like an ineffective behavior monitor portion of a firewall to me. I have it turned off for that reason.
BTW, I use Private Firewall, which I know is not the best (and is no longer being updated ), but there is a setting for every behavior/connection to generate a pop up. I use this setting and from there I can decide whether to allow once/block once/allow every time/block every time. Same applies to internet connections. Maybe that's similar to UAC, but PF gives easy access to the settings if I change my mind. Wish it were easier, so I could, for example, set an entire behavior to "ask" (like keyboard monitoring) system wide rather than just for each process one at a time. Over two years I've gotten fairly used to using PF, though, and I feel it's much more configurable than the Windows options of UAC + Windows firewall