Firewalls

[mike]

Thanks to those wha answered Steve Wilsons question

(Incidentally. can anyone tell me why so many names in this ng appear as a
jumble of symbols, although my tooltip sorts them into English?)

The real question is - I've got 3 firewalls, one in an ADSL router, the
Windows Firewall, and I'm using Comodo.

The reason I like Comodo is it tells me if any prog is phoning home, and
requires a permission.

Can I turn off both the other two, or is another one preferable, or do I
need more than one?

I'd prefer to have just one running, as I used to before routers and
Windows Firewalls, I never had a sniff of trouble with one of the several
excellent freeware jobs.

So can I use just one? If so. which?

TIA

mike

 

[R. McCarty]

Most 3rd-Party Firewalls should automatically disable the internal
Windows Firewall. The router actually has NAT and is usually
only disabled by setting the access device to "Bridging Mode". You
should check XP's Firewall status from it's control applet in Control
Panel and disable, if Active.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Thanks to those wha answered Steve Wilsons question

(Incidentally. can anyone tell me why so many names in this ng appear as a
jumble of symbols, although my tooltip sorts them into English?)

The real question is - I've got 3 firewalls, one in an ADSL router, the
Windows Firewall, and I'm using Comodo.

The reason I like Comodo is it tells me if any prog is phoning home, and
requires a permission.

Can I turn off both the other two, or is another one preferable, or do I
need more than one?

I'd prefer to have just one running, as I used to before routers and
Windows Firewalls, I never had a sniff of trouble with one of the several
excellent freeware jobs.

So can I use just one? If so. which?

TIA

mike

You do need to have a firewall running, but there's no point in
running more than one. My position is that running two or more software
firewalls simultaneously is generally unnecessary and can _sometimes_
cause conflicts, potentially negating the protection of both. Even ig
there is no conflict, having two firewalls running simultaneously is
most certainly an unnecessary drain on system resources, without
providing any additional benefit.

As Comodo is the superior product, by far, I'd recommend that you
disable the Windows firewall.

If you use a router with NAT, it's still a very good idea to use a
3rd party software firewall. Like WinXP's built-in firewall,
NAT-capable routers do nothing to protect the user from him/herself (or
any "curious," over-confident teenagers in the home). Again -- and I
cannot emphasize this enough -- almost all spyware and many Trojans and
worms are downloaded and installed deliberately (albeit unknowingly) by
the user. So a software firewall, such as Comodo, Sygate or ZoneAlarm,
that can detect and warn the user of unauthorized out-going traffic is
an important element of protecting one's privacy and security, alerting
you to an unwanted malware application's activity. (Remember: Most
antivirus applications do not even scan for or protect you from
adware/spyware, because, after all, you've installed them yourself, so
you must want them there, right?)

I use both a router with NAT and Sygate Personal Firewall, even
though I generally know better than to install scumware. When it
comes to computer security and protecting my privacy, I prefer the old
"belt and suspenders" approach. In the professional IT community,
this is also known as a "layered defense." Basically, it comes down
to never, ever "putting all of your eggs in one basket."


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks to those wha answered Steve Wilsons question

(Incidentally. can anyone tell me why so many names in this ng appear as a
jumble of symbols, although my tooltip sorts them into English?)

I'm not sure what you mean, but perhaps you are seeing names which
were not written in the English character set.

The real question is - I've got 3 firewalls, one in an ADSL router,

That's fine.

the
Windows Firewall, and I'm using Comodo.

It is *not* good to run both.

The reason I like Comodo is it tells me if any prog is phoning home, and
requires a permission.

Can I turn off both the other two, or is another one preferable, or do I
need more than one?

I'd prefer to have just one running, as I used to before routers and
Windows Firewalls, I never had a sniff of trouble with one of the several
excellent freeware jobs.

Leave the router alone. It doesn't hurt you in any way to keep it on.
But do not run two software firewalls. You achieve no extra
protection, you incur the extra overhead of running two firewalls, and
you run the risk (probably small, but not zero) of conflicts between
them.

See http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/protect/firewall.mspx
which includes the following:

"Q. Should I use both the built-in firewall and a software firewall
from a different company on my Windows XP computer?

"A. No. Running multiple software firewalls is unnecessary for typical
home computers, home networking, and small-business networking
scenarios. Using two firewalls on the same connection could cause
issues with connectivity to the Internet or other unexpected behavior.
One firewall, whether it is the Windows XP Internet Connection
Firewall or a different software firewall, can provide substantial
protection for your computer."

If you like Comodo, use Comodo, and turn off the Windows firewall.

 

[mike]

One firewall, whether it is the Windows XP Internet Connection
Firewall or a different software firewall, can provide substantial
protection for your computer."

If you like Comodo, use Comodo, and turn off the Windows firewall.

Thanks, Ken, Bruce and "R"; that's pretty clear

mike

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Thanks, Ken, Bruce and "R"; that's pretty clear

You're welcome. Glad to help.

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Thanks, Ken, Bruce and "R"; that's pretty clear

mike

You're welcome.


--

Bruce Chambers

Help us help you:



They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. -Bertrand Russell

 

[XS11E]

(Incidentally. can anyone tell me why so many names in this ng
appear as a jumble of symbols, although my tooltip sorts them into
English?)

Yes, you're using Xnews (and a VERY old, obsolete version at that, the
current released version is 2006.08.24, pay no attention to the "test"
designation, nobody knows why Luu Tran did that.) and it needs help in
decoding some character sets. Mime-Proxy works well for that,

http://www.lamaiziere.net/mp_pagen.html

If you need any help in setting it up or with Xnews look for
news.software.readers on your news server.

 

[Plato]

The real question is - I've got 3 firewalls, one in an ADSL router, the
Windows Firewall, and I'm using Comodo.

The reason I like Comodo is it tells me if any prog is phoning home, and
requires a permission.

Well, if you have a software firewall that tells you if your pc in
phoning home, then in theory, you dont need the windows firewall,
expecially since you have a a router. I've been using NAT routers for
years, but still have a software firewall that alerts me if an app wants
to phone home. I'm still using and old, free version of zone alarm to
alert me if an app wants to phone home.

 

[mike]

Yes, you're using Xnews (and a VERY old, obsolete version at that, the
current released version is 2006.08.24, pay no attention to the "test"
designation, nobody knows why Luu Tran did that.) and it needs help in
decoding some character sets. Mime-Proxy works well for that,

http://www.lamaiziere.net/mp_pagen.html

Thanks XS11e

Sorry abouy the old version of Xnews, it must have snuck in when I
changed to XP.

Having updated, I can see no difference at all to the prog, which may
tell you something about my competence in this area!

I can see that the Utf character set is baffling Xnews, so that explains
that, but it only happens on this ng, (I lurk around 5 or 6 others), so I
wondered if hter's something different about it as its a
microsoft.publicxx.

Thanks for the Mime proxy reference, but it looks a bit severe for me;
takes me back to my years failing to make linux work, and I haven't
enough life left to continue _that_ project, so I'll carry on letting my
tooltips do the work

mike