Strictly disagree by own experience
I saw a firewall engine caught Dolphin’s network connection request if to leave open it’s window with multimedia content. Did not see the same for text files folders. It connects to random Internet IPs with random ports i meant I have open one window of it and after some time point it starts to connect. Just like the VLC 3 and 4 does but Dolphin starts after about 3-4 hours after opening, VLC after about 8-10 hours on paused mode. AFAIK I have fully disabled all feedbacks:
For me the behavior looks like at least as suspicious-ware, I did not analyze their network traffic, only connections attempts.
I did not find a time to purely collect the info, timing, hosts needed for bug report about the cases, just blocked them.
Just as summary that was there: Add an installation step of firewall setup or to notify a user that no firewall enabled by default - #21 by alven (under the the history of outbound connections (destination host list) spoiler)