Temporarily Blocking Apps access to the internet?

[ald4]

Hi

I'm just about to sign up to mobile broadband. There are lots of deals in the UK at the moment with free dongles for your laptop, but since I don't really need it I'll only be opting for the tiny 1GB a month plan.

What I would really like is to be able at the click of a mouse be able to stop all internet traffic except for the browser  and maybe 1 or 2 apps I choose like my messenger while everything else like Windows Update and anything else I usually allow automatic access is denied until I get back to my unlimited home connection and can switch back to normal.

Firewalls give you the ability to block an app's access to the internet but what I really need is one that has the ability to create different 'profiles' for different situations so I could create a 'mobile profile' to block most things when I'm away from home.

Better still would be a seperate app that could do this since I might not want to change something as important as my firewall for this one feature

I know that I could set just about everything to ask before connecting to the internet but I'm used to allowing things to autoupdate by themselves now

Any thoughts?

[f0dder]

Interesting idea...

I guess the only thing that really swallows bandwidth would be windows update and any auto-updaters... so the easy option would be simply disabling those, and only running WinUpd automatically?

Btw, 1gig of traffic is used up very fast, even when only doing mail and surfing with AdBlockPlus... ugh

[ald4]

Btw, 1gig of traffic is used up very fast, even when only doing mail and surfing with AdBlockPlus... ugh

I know!

I've been using a monitor for the past week to get a feel for how much bandwidth I use and it's amazing. Noscript and Adblock will help.

But it gives me a headache thinking about all the stuff I've given permission to use the internet over the years.

Even just thinking of playing a song means that Itunes might try to do all sorts 'genius' stuff while another media player I was thinking of trying Songbird ever gets usable then it wants permission to download all sorts of stuff about the song you're playing at the moment.

I've seen quite a few suggestions on the internet where people sites are suggesting turning off Windows Update and that actually worries me thinking of some people just turning it off and not bothering to update their computer any more.

I think if somone came up with an app that was specifically marketed at giving people a 'mobile mode' it would become very popular soon - In the UK the prices for mobile broadband are really coming down and with the pay-as-you-go versions quite cheap for the dongle I can't see why everyone won't have it soon if only just for a backup to their main connection.

[f0dder]

Personally I'd never go for any non-flatrate internet connection if I could help it (OK, if on-the-go was subscription-free and had very low price per gigabyte, it could be interesting)... but yeah, as things are now, your suggestion would make for a nice application. Let's see if any of the other DC'ers know of an app

PS: for media player, perhaps check out Foobar2000. It's a pretty no-nonsense player that handles a lot of formats and does it well... and doesn't do anything on the net unless you want it to