Windows 10: Q Firewall settings: Is it ok to change any existing 'public' setting to private?

Hello,

I took a look at my access-list in the Windows Firewall settings and was surprised how many things were put to public instead of private (or were both selected).


I installed a fresh Windows 10 yesterday and I barely had any requests yet from programs for access private/public. So it must've been Windows itself that gave permission, alot of them were from Windows apps itself.


My question is: Can I remove every permission for public, and switch them to private? Or do some parts of the Windows OS require both access to public and private? Some that are listed do not have any permission at all, so I'll leave those untouched but I'd like to get rid of any public permissions as long as it won't break Windows OS functionality.


Regards,

- Roy

:)

 

How to change the network setting (Private, public, etc)

this answer from a different Microsoft page worked for me


Giridhar
J replied on

• Microsoft

Accomplishments

• Microsoft

Hi,

Thank you for your interest in Windows 10.

I suggest you to follow the steps below to
change your network from Public to Private:

• 
  Type PowerShell in Search Window and then right click on it and click on
  Run as Administrator.
  
• 
  Type the following command to find your interface Index:
  Get-NetConnectionProfile
  
• 
  Use your interface index (for example 5) with this command:
  Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 5 -NetworkCategory Private
  
• 
  Now reboot the device and check if the network has changed from Public to Private.
  

Hope this information is helpful. Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

 

Change Network from Public to Private

Hi,

Thank you for your interest in Windows 10.

I suggest you to follow the steps below to
change your network from Public to Private:

• 
  Type PowerShell in Search Window and then right click on it and click on
  Run as Administrator.
  
• 
  Type the following command to find your interface Index:
  Get-NetConnectionProfile
  
• 
  Use your interface index (for example 5) with this command:
  Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceIndex 5 -NetworkCategory Private
  
• 
  Now reboot the device and check if the network has changed from Public to Private.
  

Hope this information is helpful. Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you.

 

Set Network Location to Private or Public in Windows 10  

Hi Brink and thank you for the welcome

I tried what you suggested but when doing this, i noticed that whenever i am connected to my VPN, the Windows network shows up as "unidentified network" instead of network 1,2,3 or whatever. So when i went into regedit and looked for networks, i found some but none called unidentified.
There was one network with the value 0 so i changed it to 1 (private) but after checking, my VPN connection still shows as public.

I am not really sure why it says unidentified network in Windows when i am connected to the VPN but it seems that this is the cause for the problem. If i could only find the VPN network in the list of networks in regedit, i think i would be able to change the value to 1.

Hmm..not sure how to proceed with this. Any ideas?