I get this message all too often. It was annoying a couple months ago, it gets worse every time I see it. So far, I have clicked “no” every time for a few obvious reasons.
- Someone apparently forgot to accommodate the space in the “Program Files“ folder name when they wrote this dialog. I may be the only person alive who still thinks that spaces have no place in file or folder names for this very reason but that doesn't excuse the fact that not only was this written badly, it was written badly and never tested. The developers are obviously not trustworthy, so I automatically click “no“.
- Due to the error mentioned above, I am not told what program is trying to perform the action. If I do not know what the program is, I do not plan on agreeing to let it do anything.
- The mysterious program wants to change settings on my firewall. What does that mean? Does it want to turn it off? Open a port? Open all ports? Close them? The mysterious program apparently thinks that is none of my business so I respectfully click “no“ while appending a few blue words to my verbal answer. For the 4th time this weekend. Which brings us to number 4.
- See the little check in the bottom left corner? I just checked that before I took the screen shot. Not that it matters, though, because I check it every single time I get this dialog and it doesn't care what I think, apparently. The function is written so defectively that this simple function is broken? There is no way I am going to allow it to change my firewall settings.
- I guess I could find out more about the mysterious program, the mysterious changes, etc, by clicking the “more info“ button right? Wrong. The button is just there to toy with me, I think. It looks like a button. It even changes state when you mouse-over and when you click it. But that is all. It doesn't actually give me more information. I was going to make this list a “strike one!“, etc, list but there are just too many strikes against it. I guess I could move to a bowling metaphor, I'm almost halfway to a perfect game.
This would be okay if it didn't happen so frequently. It is like a pop-up box screaming “you installed defective, un-tested software on your computer! Let it play with your firewall!” Inconvenient, insulting, and sometimes infuriating.