There are multiple firewall products offered for consumer use. Home Firewall products are offered by Norton, McAfee, Microsoft, and others. These consumer level firewalls are different from enterprise level firewalls in one major way. The consumer level firewalls are all outbound firewalls. That is, these products only monitor outbound traffic.
These firewall products afford users the added security of determining which of their applications can access the web. These products alert users to unauthorized programs attempting to gain web access. These firewalls only work with outbound traffic; no incoming traffic is monitored. So these firewalls have absolutely no bearing on any data, cookies, or referring URLs being downloaded by the user's computer.
As a result, neither the Norton nor the McAfee firewall software has any effect on any subscription based services. The only step the user needs to take is to make sure that their browser of choice is 'white-listed' or 'allowed' by the firewall they are currently using. Once the browser is connecting freely with the World Wide Web, nothing else must be done to access Gale products.