Firewall?

LizEstelle

I've been managing to surf the net for at least three years quite happily without a firewall. I have Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D and Superantispyware. I also have Avira as antivirus.

I run scans quite often.

Interestingly, none of these has ever, in the space of those three years, detected anything of note.

Maybe it's because I never knowingly visit dodgy websites or open emails from people I don't know.

Is it really worth the bother of getting a personal firewall for the sake of placating the bank (Martin's latest advice)? If so, what's the latest recommendation for freeware, please?

kwikbreaks

XP has an incoming threat firewall built in.
Vista and Win 7 also check which programs are making outbound connections and ask you to authorise it.

Any router will give you the protection afforded by NAT which is better than any software firewall and some offer a fully fledged SPI firewall.

Software firewalls are, for the most part, surplus to requirements. The only time it could be worth running one is when you use a modem rather than a router.

GregF_2

I've always used ZoneAlarm free firewall and touch wood never had any problems;
(Can't post link, just search 'zone alarm free firewall' and it's result 1 on Google)

HTH
Greg

mr_fishbulb

If you are using Windows XP SP2 or later, then you will have a personal firewall as part of Windows (unless you have disabled it).

mr_fishbulb

kwikbreaks wrote: »

XP has an incoming threat firewall built in.
Vista and Win 7 also check which programs are making outbound connections and ask you to authorise it.

I was checking my Windows 7 firewall at the weekend (oh, the fun things I get up to!) and its default is to allow any program to have an outgoing connection as long as the program initiates.

I started playing around with setting it to block unless there is a rule allowing, hoping that it would prompt me to create rules - I couldn't get it to prompt, just block it without warnings.

kwikbreaks

mr_fishbulb wrote: »

I was checking my Windows 7 firewall at the weekend (oh, the fun things I get up to!) and its default is to allow any program to have an outgoing connection as long as the program initiates.

Good to know that MS are delivering their usual top notch security features. I thought I'd seen auth requests - maybe not then.

I still wouldn't bother with one though as just about the first thing most malware does is silently (or sometimes not so silently) disable any firewall and AV it finds running.

closed

A 3rd party outbound firewall like ZA will probably slow your pc down, with all that security software on your pc, it is unlikely to be of any benefit whatsoever.

If you have a router, that will stop people hacking in from the outside via open ports, if you are using a modem, use the windows firewall.

[Deleted User]

If you've got a spare 5 minutes give the following thread a read:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1371573&highlight=firewall

GeoffX

You'd need an amazingly fast internet connection for a software firewall to slow your PC down. My firewall has used 13 seconds of processor time in four hours. Most of that would be it starting up.

I used the free version of ZoneAlarm or years, but it seemed to become less and less stable. It is easy to use, but that's mainly because it's quite primitive.

Earlier this year I switched to Comodo, and even with a router wouldn't be without it. I'd consider not using it an act of madness. It does more than just packet filtering; it also monitors things such as file and registry accesses. You'd be surprised at the kind of things some software tries to do. I use it with Avira Antivir, but I deactivate the resident shield as all it does is slow the machine down. I can scan downloaded files myself.

I also use SpyBot and SpywareBlaster to populate my Hosts file, but not for anything else. I use Maxthon 2 as my browser and will switch to Maxthon 3 when they finish it.

closed

deactivating a resident shield is the worst thing you can do, once you are infected, it's too late, and you don't have to "download" anything to get infected

esuhl

In a nutshell..

A hardware filewall on a router will stop unsolicited incoming traffic. All outgoing traffic (and replies to outbound traffic) will be permitted unless you have specifically blocked it.

A software firewall will allow you to decide whether (and how) individual programs on your PC are allowed to connect to the Internet.

So... if an unknown hacker is randomly trying to conect to your network, your hardware firewall should block them. But, if you (accidentally) download and install a virus/trojan/whatever, and it tries to contact home, the chances are that only a software firewall would block it. Your harware firewall wouldn't know that it's a dodgy request since it comes from a trusted network (i.e. your own).

Hope that helps...