Windows Firewall setting preventing access to OneDrive

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I use OneDrive occasionally, never had a problem until now.  Today, when I tried to sign in, it said that the website (https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-au/signin) could not be found.  Got the same response in both Firefox and IE, with the  error message “INET_E_RESOURCE_NOT_FOUND”, but IE was a little more informative.  It told me that the outbound firewall rule “WPD MS Third party IP Block V38” was blocking access to the site.  So I went in and disabled that rule,and then the problem went away and I could access OneDrive normally.

What is this WPD… rule, and are there any consequences in having it disabled?

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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Bundaburra wrote:

What is this WPD… rule, and are there any consequences in having it disabled?

Have you installed the WPD privacy dashboard ? https://wpd.app/

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Light flashes above head ….  Of course, that explains the WPD in the name of the rule.  Evidently it’s a new rule introduced by the WPD program, but who knows what else it blocks beside OneDrive?  (there’s a long string of IP addresses).  On looking again at the outbound rules in the Windows Firewall, I see a few others also with WPD in their names.  No doubt the WPD program is a useful privacy measure, but evidently it can have unwanted consequences.

The WPD program was written up in a recent edition of the Newsletter, and it looked pretty good, but ……???

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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In my experience, the defaults for third party privacy tools err on one side or another: maximum privacy (thereby breaking some features), or retain usability (potentially giving up some privacy).

If the tool is worth using, you’ll be able to customize the settings to suit your needs.

For WPD, it seems there is a one to keep OneDrive functionality, mentioned on this page: https://wpd.app/docs/arguments/.

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