I wrote this post for a friend, I’m sharing it here for anybody it might help. I got asked multiple times how I download cracked music software so I figured it’d be easier to write it down once. It’s meant for people with very low technical skills who just want to start torrenting software without major risks, and it includes a bunch of safety tips that are already known in this community.
If you have feedback, let me know and I’ll update the post.
Something really funny happens when it comes to software for system administration, programming and Cybersecurity where the second best solutions are actually free (and almost always open source) ones, and the only things better than those free ones involve enterprise support contracts that cost more than your house every month and dedicated support people for every contract. And it’s often arguable how much better those enterprise solutions are than the free and open source ones you can grab off of GitHub
In the case of firewalls specifically, windows firewall is actually more robust than whatever you might install onto windows, and the better thing to do would be to run Linux and use UFW or IPtables. Bonus points if you further sandbox the app via containerization. Or if you don’t need granular application-level filtering a dedicated firewall/router like OPNsense/PFsense tends to be more than good enough for many small businesses
Oh, I 100% agree with all of those suggestions and use each myself these days, but a cracked copy of Netlimiter was a godsend back in the day, and I’d still recommend it over expecting the average Windows user to be vigilant about creating firewall rules everytime they download something new.
Except against MS Software, those still leak through, even though you blocked them.
Btw, Glasswire and Simplewall use Windows’ Firewall, as far as i know.