[STUPIDGIRL]

What is the best free firewall? and what is the best bought firewall?
Is black ice any good?

STUPIDGIRL

[DaveA]

With XP I would say the Free version of ZoneAlarm would work just fine for you.

[STUPIDGIRL]

OK, I'm downloading zonealarm. Now for the stupid question.......
I have sygate pf can they run at the same time or do i need to get rid of sygate?

[Stoner]

You should only have one firewall installed.
Two can lead to conflicts.

[STUPIDGIRL]

Thanks for the info. I"ll just run one of them.

STUPIDGIRL

[new tech guy]

Zone alarm free is good but the pro is better, however if you want free id say use comodo firewall, it never did me any harm on xp or vista.

[telecom69]

Sygate has not been supported for a very long time now,you should uninstall it asap ...I think that Comodo is a great firewall and of course its free too,I got it after I found that zone alarm was giving me some problems, and I never suspected it ...

3 years ago this month that sygate was taken over by Symantec, and its had no support since then so its massively out of date,you cant update it,but having said that lots of people still use it,your pushing your luck though by using it .....

[fairnooks]

Easily the best firewall is a router unless a person is one who will click on links for codecs and uses common file sharing programs; stuff will be led aboard by the hand then and a software firewall might alert you to outgoing (after the battle is already lost) if the malware doesn't just use the same admin rights the person is probably running with to bypass or ignore software detection, especially if UPnP is on, which is also a hole in hardware firewalls if its not disabled. Software firewalls will still block the kiddy scripters that don't know any better, and prompt one for every legitimate call under the sun these days as so much stuff moves into the cloud.

[zbd21]

Comodo first firewall to earn 100 % score:


http://www.matousec.com/projects/pro...ge/results.php

[Hughv]

What Fairnooks said.
Software firewalls are nothing but a pain to the average web surfer. After a while, the false alarms and obscure warnings are just ignored, completely eliminating any usefulness the firewall may have had.
I don't use one (I do have a NAT router) and I won't support support them for my friends.

[Stoner]

From what I've read, a NAT router can be hacked.
They are useful, but like most security, not 100% fool proof.

I use one.
I also use a software firewall to compliment it.
I also consider browser security, anti virus and anti malware apps at the same time.
I'm even using Sandboxie.

It's rare for me to have a security issue....but it has happened and then I'm thankful for the Acronis drive images that I have made.
Imo, once breached, how certain are you that all malicious script has been identified and removed through scanning apps?
With a known secure drive image, there is no doubt unless the bios or hardware firmware has been hacked( doable from what I read but rare ).


BTW....I have seen my Linksys default to the preset password ( admin )after a power outage. If you aren't aware of that outage, like occurring when you aren't present, that router could be open to a hacker taking control and you'd not know immediately.
At that point a software firewall as a backup makes sense.

[Hughv]

You're right that nothing is foolproof.
I suspect that most people don't have any data worth stealing, and the "hackers" we're talking about are mostly script kiddies fooling around.
In my experience, most PC damage is caused by ignorance on the part of the user and some fairly clever spyware.
For people who are using their PCs for valuable data or nationalsecurity secrets, more rigorous protection is a must. For the rest of us it's unnecessary and cumbersome.
Interestingly, several of my friends have switched to Mac for this very reason, and I don 't blame them.

[Stoner]

I suspect many computer users buy over the internet, do banking and bill paying, not aware that a keylogger installed on them by malware would expose heir names and account numbers to criminal elements.
Don't have to have national security secrets on a computer to be a target.

[new tech guy]

I say yes, your router acts as a good firewall but especially in the case of a laptop that is known to leave the home network a software one is a must. I use comodo on my laptop and it atcually comes with a good set of preset permissions for known applications, so it greatly quiets down the software. Also, in a college you dont just have pointless script kiddies running around, the person next to me may be school age, but a very experienced hacker and be spying on my system at any given moment. So its always good to have the second layer. Also, i figure if the interal network at home is secured it may even help protect those pcs from a worm trying to hop through the lan to the other healthy pcs. Also, i have non technical users running comodo and i hear no complaints about the software from them.