Free firewalls and anti-virus software

sra

MGC wrote:

Well what's so funny?

See this thread

hope this helps

Heleyon

Thanks, everyone, for your various opinions. All points duly noted.

Crikey, I only wanted to warn people of a possible problem!

It is usually the case that there are even freebie apps which are better quality than what you get with Windows. Fair enough. Zone Alarm is better. It's just that, having settled with Windows firewall several years ago, I've had no problems, so I'm happy with what it does--for now, at least.

As regards the spyware from PC Tools (Spyware Doctor), it was shown to detect more than the freebies I'd tried, like AdAware. Maybe I could pay more, and get something better. But this does a very good job for the price--good VFM.

If anyone wants to tell me I'm 'fick', please don't be shy.

As if.

espresso

Heleyon wrote:

If anyone wants to tell me I'm 'fick', please don't be shy.

As if.

OK, you really should ditch the Windoze firewall as it only give inbound protection. Any of the free alternatives will give much better protection and you can check their effectiveness by using Shields Up port scan.

superscaper

Heleyon wrote:

It is usually the case that there are even freebie apps which are better quality than what you get with Windows. Fair enough. Zone Alarm is better. It's just that, having settled with Windows firewall several years ago, I've had no problems, so I'm happy with what it does--for now, at least.

I think the problem is that with windows firewall, you could have a problem and wouldn't know it. Eg if you had a keylogger installed sending information to someone, windows firewall would neither block it or tell you about it.

albertross_2

In my experience 90% of users click allow everything with outbound blocking firewalls, so for those users, there is not much advantage in having ZA installed over the windows firewall.

superscaper

albertross wrote:

In my experience 90% of users click allow everything with outbound blocking firewalls, so for those users, there is not much advantage in having ZA installed over the windows firewall.

Very good point, and taking that into consideration, windows firewall essentially is a good thing in terms of "better than nothing at all". Although presumably if someone is reading this thread they should be made aware of those security hazards as they're obviously interested in the security of their pc.

Juicekrew

Funny things these discussions on AV....

Personally, and before i continue i'm not 'bragging'...well not REALLY bragging in a 'My setup's better than yours' kinda way...just stating, I've never used Virus software for my home computers in over 8 years and i've only had 2 virus scares.
Once when I foolishly clicked on a link my DAD gave me on an unprotected 98 laptop 4 years ago.(he got the link in the post off of an advert:lol ), and once when i forgot to turn my firewall back on DOH! But that was when i was using IE :shocked:and hadn't configured it with paranoid settings properly.

I've been using Tiny Personal 2.0.15.0 from 2001. Absolutely TINY footprint ( go figure) and highly configurable. Kill ICMP traffic, NetBIOS ports, Telnet etc. Allow 80 and 443 traffic, kill the rest making a few exceptions. Kill all un-needed services and bob's your aunty. I don't use IE so there's 80% of my inet headaches gone. Firewall takes away the rest. That plus the VERY basic protection of a belkin ADSL/Router. I don't click on attachments, ol 2000 and ol express use the paranoid ie settings and i deny them anyother type of access apart from my 25 and 110 for smtp...forgot 389 for the LDAP. Internal network is fine, both segs.

now that combo allows me to use both new and old machines with impunity. I still get blistering performance out of a PII 450 with a 128 Meg stick. However i first put Nortons on my duaghters old PII 450 with 192 Megs. :eek: Entry from Winlogon went from approx 5 seconds to over 3 minutes. Plus I had to create a seperate Hardware profile with the Nortons services disabled for it to remember what it could do. Shocking....... Anyhew...I thought i'd mention since you still can find PF2.exe online (about 568K or so).

Windows Firewall? Ha, HA HA, HA HA HA HA HA:rotfl: (laughs uncontrollably onto the floor)

wolfman

Another problem with Windows Firewall, apart from no outgoing protection as already mentioned, is that it has an open API. This allows programs upon installing give themselves firewall permissions. Obviously this is open to abuse.

The best firewalls are the ones that run isolated from everything else, like ZoneAlarm or Kerio. I personally use Kerio.

I have heard about such compatibility problems though. ZoneAlarm can often be awkward, which is why prefer Kerio (and it's lighter).

roob_the_doob

Not mentioned in the article is another excellent free antivirus product from Avira, available for download from http://www.free-av.com/

It's got a small memory footprint, doesn't hog all the CPU time, and works quite happily with Zonealarm - I've been using them together for a couple of years without problem.

Juicekrew

Roob,
Which version? The current version, as of now, available for download from their website? I ask since I know people on older machines (my girlfriend for example, go figure ) who seem to have a habit of clicking first and wondering about it later. So they'd need processor economical A/V.

Juice