sundance-communications.com/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories firewalls

You could try Zone Alarm.
There is a free verson and it's fairly easy to set up.
https://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp?lid=nav_za

[This message has been edited by bullcube (edited September 15, 2003).]

i may be mistaken but i seemed to have acquired a few extra pop-ups from when i downloaded zonealarm. they are still there even after uninstall. is there a manual way to eliminate these pop-ups?

I use a google tool bar which has a pop-up blocker as one of it's features. It works fairly well for me.
https://toolbar.google.com/

that's not a solution but a fix.

[This message has been edited by test-ok (edited September 15, 2003).]

Chuck, thats such a loaded question! Ask ten people and you'll get ten different answers. I agree with Avaya, start out the the basic firewall in XP. Then you must get an anti-virus software, for me I like Pccillin by Trend Micro. It has a firewall built in with it and has worked great for me, just my two cents!

Yeah... antivirus is a grand idea.

I'm more keen to Norton Antivirus, but that's just my two cents. They're a little bit more frequent in their updates of virus patches and what not.

I don't have an antivirus piece of software on my PC, and I do a whole lot of stuff on here... and I've never gotten a single virus. Now maybe that's because I keep myself away from the red zone where you're likely to get one, but I just never have gotten one. I do get some scripting viruses that do some popup damage, but I use Spybot to eliminate those problems for the most part.

I guess it all comes down to each person's individual experience.

If you're on the internet and you don't have an anti-virus program, you're nuts! Get one right away. There's too much junk on the net to go bare. Get updates AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK.

The biggest problem I've seen with firewall software is the overhead can kill system performance. I've un-installed it on a couple of machines because they got SO slow. If your computer is not relatively new, i.e. 1.5-2+ GHz processor speed, then adding firewall software may make your high-speed connection seem slower than dial-up used to be!

My personal favorite is the cable router and anti-virus software. It's not quite as secure as the full-blown firewall, but doesn't whack the performance the way software can. Get a router that can block all incoming connections, and leave it closed unless there's a reason to open it.

Howard

PS - I'm an old 1A2 guy, too. WAY too many years doing this stuff... hd

Hey Avaya, take it from me. I went about 3 good years before my NAV detected a virus. 6 months later, I put off downloading the updates because of slow speed to the net. Sure enough, I picked up a virus, and it caused me a lot of headache. Now I run NAV on all my machines. Just an FYI for all: If you install NAV with one year of free updates, uninstall it at 11 1/2 months. Reload the program and you get another year of free updates from them. I small bug in the software I am sure.

Yeah, my method is obviously flawed... but I don't know, I've never had a problem...

And I've been doing this internet thing since 1994. But... I know the avenues that get you into trouble.

I guess I'm just waiting until the day I do...

Just wanted to add a couple of things. If you enable the firewall protection in Windows and you use a broadband router with a firewall, you should be pretty well covered for the most part. Very critical to keep virus definitions and windows updates current. Set them to automatically update on a weekly schedule and that should do. Most new difinitions and updates are posted on Mondays. Set your machine to get them on Tuesday. For those of you who want to use a wireless ready router or switch, get one that does MAC filtering. the MAC address is the unique address of a network card. If you have a couple of PC's or laptops in the house running wireless, the MAC filtering will allow you to restrict access to only those two PC's. Keeps out the neighbors and drive by hackers.

while we are on the subject of computers, for all those techs who use laptops, enable passwords for the BIOS and also for windows. The Bios password means you can't even boot the machine with out a password and the windows machines will not allow you to access any windows programs. If your laptop is stolen, like my friends was, it will basically render it useless to most people. Might as well make it as hard on 'em as possible.