portmaster

Windows Defender Firewall already has outbound filtering and can target individual Windows services, but Microsoft ships it with outbound traffic allowed by default and exposes the finer controls through a management console built for administrators rather than for reviewing every new...

Windows already ships with a surprisingly capable security baseline—Microsoft Defender and SmartScreen together stop a huge volume of commodity threats—but for anyone who treats a fresh install as “configuration in progress,” adding a small set of open‑source tools will materially raise privacy...

Portmaster is a free, open‑source privacy firewall from Safing that intercepts and visualizes every network connection on your Windows PC, lets you enforce per‑app rules, encrypts DNS by default, and applies system‑wide tracker and malware blocklists — but it also requires careful configuration...