Information Addicts

Many people seem to either rely on Windows XP firewall, have an outdated version of Norton or MacAfee and don’t realize it or don’t even use one at all. Why is a firewall so important you may ask? Well firstly I want to explain what a firewall actually does: A firewall is software or hardware that creates a protective barrier between your computer and potentially damaging content on the Internet or network, it also protects your computer by blocking dangerous software trying to find a way to connect to your computer, rather than communications from a person or program you want to interact with.
Using Windows XP firewall in my eyes is a waste of time as all it can do is protect you from outside attacks, however it does not monitor or block outbound traffic which means if an attacker does eventually manage to get onto your pc, for example you could click on an email attachment or download some infected software, then a key logger for instance (which is a piece of malicious code that can capture every key that you type) could then access your PC and retrieve your passwords, bank account details, credit card numbers etc. Windows XP firewall does not prevent this from happening. So I wouldn’t even consider using it. If you a have Norton or MacAfee firewall check that it is up to date by clicking on the update button on the firewall tab. If your version has ran out then either pay to upgrade it or even better use a free version. There are a few free versions such as Zone Alarm, Sunbelt Personal Firewall and Comodo Firewall of which I highly recommend and it was voted best free firewall this year by PC World. It is easy to install, use and is very secure, they actually advertise that it doesn’t leak as most firewalls do. Take my advice and please get yourself protected properly.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 3:26 pm and is filed under PC Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.