Firewall report

[Steve]

Many times I have seen posts on this NG asking about firewalls. I decided to
put my own to the test by visiting some sites that do online tests. The
tests were performed with the firewall on & off. Symantec, Sygate,
Preventon, Auditmypc were among the ones tried out. My firewall seems to
stand up to the tests with flying colours. Why am I telling you this?
Because I'm using XPs built in firewall. I know it only scans incoming
communication but I think that's pobably all that anyone would need.

The only info they were able to obtain was: I'm running XP with IE 6, my IP
address and my host name.

Did MS write this firewall or was it supplied by a 3rd party?

 

[Mike Hall]

There are some who like to feel that their firewall is also preventing
unauthorized material from passing to peoples unknown.. I am one of them,
and use McAfee for better or worse.. I may have XP's firewall running too..
must go check.. lol

 

[Steve]

I do have a copy of Norton Firewall 2003 but always got annoyed 'cos it kept
asking question and telling me about things. Too much configuration for my
liking. I'd prefer it it to install and get on with it, quietly! Any
suggestions?

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

One thing you can do is turn off the notices that tell you every
single time an attack has been thwarted/blocked. Those can come fast
and furious on some days. In my experience, Norton firewall only has
to "ask" about a particular applications Internet access "rights" one
time, and the wizard was quite easy to use. I suppose the brief
interruptions can seem inconvenient at times, but it's well worth the
trouble in the long run. To paraphrase by sig: You can have
convenience, or your can have security. You can't have both at once.


Bruce Chambers

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You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on
having both at once. -- RAH

 

[Alex Nichol]

I do have a copy of Norton Firewall 2003 but always got annoyed 'cos it kept
asking question and telling me about things. Too much configuration for my
liking. I'd prefer it it to install and get on with it, quietly! Any
suggestions?

The difficulty with the inbuilt one is configuring it if you *do* need
to allow some specific access. For example (you may not be interested
in this one, but it serves as the example), if you want to send someone
a file using Windows Messenger, it is necessary that it act as a server
to the request sent from the other end when the transfer is accepted.

I use Zone Alarm - which has a quite adequate free version - and all you
need do with that is click a Yes or No button when the program first
tries, and in a case like that have the 'always do this' box checked.
So normally there is no need to look at it for days on end
ANd it does prevent those 'phone home' things, which get on your machine
more easily than you might think