Looking for a good firewall...
 

Since I got infected with "the pc must shutdown..."
I'm running on WinME, until I reformat my HD...
so...what firewall do you recommend....?

I used to be a big fan of zone alarm. It was easy to setup and use, and was fairly secure. These days, while it's still easy to use, imho it isnt as secure. Zone labs are a bit slow to issue updates, and due to it's success people are taking the time to find more exploits. So, while it's still better than nothing, i dont believe it's the best solution.

These days i use and reccomend Kerio personal firewall. While it's not quite as easy to setup as zone alarm, it works much better once it is setup. Things like having the option of being asked before another pc can access your shared folders from another pc on the network is quite handy (especially at lans).

Still, i only use kerio to filter outgoing connections. I use an old pc (running ipcop with snort) as a dedicated firewall to monitor all incoming connections. Total overkill for a home dialup connection, but it works brilliantly. :)

Zootm recommended Agnitum Outpost firewall. It, like Kerio, isn't as easy to set up as ZA, but once it's running it's great. It even includes a plugin to block adverts, which works well.

McAfee firewall is very good.....

Nortan is also very good.

Microsoft xp comes with a free firewall.

I use @Guard.


Zero problems with it what-so-ever.

I would also recomend Look'n'Stop (sometimes called LnS).

Sygate Personal Firewall PRO is excellent.

I'm using Norton2002. I'm going to try the 2004beta version. I haven't had any problems with it.

You've been missing out:http://www.software-antivirus.com/index.htmlJust click on one of the software titles to read the reviews. And from what they say, Norton and McAfee don't detect all worms and trojans.

I prefer hardware firewalls. I used to like Zone Alarm and BlackICE but BlackICE sucks now and Xone Alarm isnt as secure as atmo said.

In my 5 years of experience in corporate tech support, I've observed that the likelihood of a user's computer getting infected has nothing to do with the type of firewall installed or even the firewall's presence/absence. It actually varies inversely with the general computing aptitude of the user.

You'd think that with the advent of Internet worms that automatically traverse the net to find victims, this pattern would change. But it doesn't. Even the Blaster worm seems to infect the stupid users' computers first.

actual rejected feature from mac os alpha build 115071.1.51 (10.5):

a option that automatically blocks ANYTHING coming from a microsoft server, because "servers running microsoft(c) windows(c) server software are not as secure as other servers, and you are more prone to being infected by computer viruses and worms."



:igor:

I use Zone Alram, no probs. So yer Zone Alarm

Get a router. Spendy, but that way you have a hardware firewall. :)

Macafee and Norton both suck balls
Zonealarm Pro or if You are poor / cheap Zonealarm

ZonaAlarm is the best one.

Sounds like a good idea to me :D.

Diffrently firewall created!
if you like should give one of this firewalls!

I never liked Zone Alarm... to much xtra crap on it... I use Tiny Personal Firewall... Small lil app.. all I need.

Kerio 2.1.5 is available free from here (English version). If that doesn't work, the download page is here.

ZoneAlarm is not good. In fact, i think it really sucks. I'm pretty sure an attacker once got past a recently updated ZA, so I showed it the door. And what is it with that interface? Like Sawg said, it gets in the way for most of us.

I love Kerio, I find the remote admin feature very useful. I've locked down the PC my mum and sister use, so if they want to use a new application that requires internet access I don't have to be there or give them the password to enable it :) It does have the odd quirk though but it's better than ZA :D TinyPF was OK but lacked options IIRC.

Norton
 

I use Norman Personal Firewall 1.3 since it's an option to include from my ISP and only costs me around 3$/month. I use ZoneAlarm on my parents' and my girlfriend's computer since they are stingy.

Norman is my choice because it's easy to configurate with lots of help if you need it. ZoneAlarm (free version) is enough but I don't trust the amount on the list of blocked connections made. Like another user wrote above in the thread; perhaps some softwares lies in their's statistics files to make people pay for upgrades?

yeah but im double protected with AVG antivirus along with the firewall.

And i have the firewall changed to "high" not Normal.

Ps: If u want to use Zonealarm use the PRO version i know some that got through the "free' one.

I tryed a lot of free firewalls and i did not like the Basic look.

Im a very paranoid person.;) :weird:

iptables > *

www.netfilter.org

Just get a rooter with a hardware firewall and 2 other firewalls :)
Zonealarm pro is good, and norton is also good.
And 2 is better then one :)
cya

with all that running i am suprised you are able to connect to the web.

I can connect to the internet with no prblems, And i noticed that the 2 firewalls is a good choice, since sometimes one firwall passes some informations and the other one does not.
Of course I had to configure them so they work together, but that's not a real deal.

I use both McAfee and Zonealarm; never hurts to run multiple firewalls :up: Plus it's great having at least one working when the other fails. Going to add Kerio to the list of firewalls.

Running more than one software firewall is a waste of time.

Hardware firewall/router/dedicated box running smoothwall or ipcop etc. filtering incoming connections, and a good personal firewall on each pc to monitor outgoing connections is more than enough.

A dedicated hacker ill get into youre system no matter what.....
a firewall only helps.

Then again unless ur a bank or m$ a firewall is ok.

I use norton internet security 2003 (I am also behind a router but it doesn't have the built in firewall)

Re: Looking for a good firewall...
 

You mean Blaster? It doesn't affect ME. You're running something else. Take your pick :P

-NT4
-2000
-XP
-2003

Re: Looking for a good firewall...
 

You shoulden't have reformatted your hd, you should have just deleted the executable file, The virus that you got is not that bad, It just kills some window services which windows needs to shuttdown your pc.
next time try first to find out which programms are new , and first kill them and delete it from the net.

A good firwall is zone alarm pro, but it should also be good configurated, close the ports you don't need.

if you run more than one firewall you lose system resources. i dont even run a virus scan cuz it slows me down too much.

As opposed to when you have to revert to backups because some script kiddie's worm just wipped your hard drive?

Buy a bit more RAM if you're worried about resources, it's not that expensive. Or you could start up msconfig and shut off a lot of unneeded services.

I've compiled a quick list of security/firewall/privacy testers.

http://bcheck.scanit.be/bcheck/index.php
https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm
http://www.auditmypc.com/
http://www.portscanpro.com/scan/port...=all&scan=scan

They're not perfect, and even if you pass all the tests with flying colors your system could still be compromised by someone who knows what they're doing, but they will show you how well you've locked down your system/network.

They are all shut off. Plus I went through the actuall services list and turned off all the auto crap ones. Like messenger among others. I have never gotten a virus or worm and my one firewall works fine.