Remote Uninstall for Windows Roaming Client
Scott
Would love to see some someone inside comment on this request; when we recently spoke I forgot just how old this is - any ack of just how painful and pointless the current behavior is, especially for MSPs managing agents at scale?
Nick Saunders
Scott: Hi Scott, appreciate the feedback. We do have this feature on the consideration list for next RC enhancements - we've generally found that MSPs with large deployment are already using RMMs or other automations for deployments and offboarding of machines where they're able to leverage commands such as those in our help docs to uninstall the RC. But I absolutely understand the value in making things more intuitive from the Dashboard.
Scott
Nick Saunders You show me an example of a similar product that dead ends like the agent does on portal-delete, and I'll drop this. Every other MSP tool we use that has sane/justifiable behaviors to manage agents - simply halting dns resolution until the device reboots or service restarts is... doing what exactly?
What compelling reason do you have NOT to manage/queue the uninstall in your system? Every other tool we use can queue the uninstalls - so if devices are offline, they get that when next online - and we don't have to shepard it and plan weeks ahead for customer offboards.
Find just one example in industry that behaves as your agent currently does, and I'll stop pestering you about this. As it is, this is one of hte highest voted and oldest requests, and the impression is that you really don't have any idea how similar tooling behaves. See also - fragile and unreliable self-update mechanism.
Nick Saunders
Scott: I believe the behavior came from a security-minded perspective that browsing without a filter enabled (no policy enforced) was insecure but I know that's not going to be the right call for all businesses. We're actually looking to allow that behavior to be configurable so you choose the right approach for your users. We'd love to work on everything but as you can see we have lots of ideas and feedback to consider.
Scott
Nick Saunders That's my point - if you think this is secure; what security is being provided when the agent re-activates upon system or service restart? It doesn't even achieve the implied goal of 'killing' internet. If Huntress's host-isolation reverted on system restart, do you think their product would even be sellable?
Nick Saunders
Scott: The way it behaves is if the agent is able to reactivate it's because it has an applied policy and is filtering traffic as before. You'll see it reappear in the Dashboard.
Scott
Nick Saunders we are talking past each other at this point - have Nick H or Josh relay my email & descriptions of uninstall mgmt for 3 other agent-based solutions. I truly do not understand why you think it is acceptable that we have to mop up your code with another tool. Like, your self-update still fails open an easy 10-20% of the time, so how secure is that?
Nick Saunders
Scott: Absolutely, happy to follow up for those details and I 100% get the frustration and agree our current behavior is not very polished. Appreciate your patience and interest in chatting through things with us.
Jubaire
This would be very useful. If not done through the GUI, can you compile a msi or an approved Powershell script that we can run similar to what Scott posted below?
Zohaib
Would like this ability available for Mac roaming clients as well.
Scott
$prog = "DNSFilter"
$app = Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Where-Object { $_.Name -match $prog }
if($app -ne $null)
{
$app.Uninstall()
}
else {
Write-Host "Could not find program $prog"
}
stephen
this would be excellent -for all platforms
Aaron
100% agree that breaking DNS resolution entirely when "unlinked" makes it hard to roll out the roaming agent. Issue an uninstall command on next agent check in if a device is removed from the DNSFilter dashboard.
Bill
We still need the ability to initiate the DNS Filter uninstall from the Dashboard. Without this feature DNS Filter would be accountable for roaming agents making it look like the internet is broken. Note: this feature, as of 6/30/22 is not working. DNS Filter is failing open on all devices we've tested on, including my boss's system.
Ignore my comments from 3/10/22 regarding an uninstall program. A couple weeks later, I compiled our own uninstaller which can be initiated command line or interactive. I have the "password required" feature commented out for now.
Aaron
Agreed! Every other remote tool we use has this functionality.
Mikey @DNSFilter
Merged in a post:
Dashboard to push Roaming Agent uninstall
Bill
I work for an MSP, we manage IT for small/medium sized companies. 1) We need the ability to set devices to trigger the DNS Filter roaming agent uninstall. 2) We need the same capability for systems offline when a customer leaves. 3) Lastly, we need to remove a Site/Org from the DNS Filter Dashboard so that any future attempts to have us manage their system errors to open and not "the internet will appear "down"".
IF we don't remove the DNS Agent and the customer or former customer loses connectivity to our DNS Filter Dashboard, the device is useless. How do we overcome this show stopper?
Adam
Yes, please auto-uninstall when deleting either the roaming agent OR the entire site/client/organization! Breaking the agent is the worst!
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