Is this a good software? Did somebody try this? Thanks.
I have Norton Antivirus, Mrs. USAFAN McAffee, both on WINTEL XP.

We have used Sygate for several years and I think it is excellent, and entirely free for personal use. I have heard good things about Zonealarm although never used it.

If you have several PCs, I suggest a router with built in firewall. I like SMC.

Zone Alarm is free for personal and non profit use, I've been using it for years, and it's never let me down. I also have the firewall in the router turned on, but it's not stopping say exe or pif files from coming through, Zone Alarm gets those.

I also have anti virus software running, but consider that the last line of defense, just for things that get through the firewall and common sense.

I would check to see how frequent their updates are, hours can make a difference. If Symantec and McAfee have posted a upgrade today and they have not, it may be worth looking to a paid antivirus.

I think using both software and hardware firewalls is good. The software firewalls tell you if you caught a Trojan because they monitor suspicious outbound traffic packets from your computer (something that the built in MS firewall dosn't do BTW.)

I would go with Zonealarm or Sygate or something like that that has been around awhile and has a lot of happy users. With security you want the tried and true.

Zone Alarm like other software firewalls blocks ports that allow traffic in and out of your computer. For those with home networks that share broadband and allow peer to peer file and print sharing, software firewalls can cause a partial or complete breakdown of the network.

If this happens, help is virtually nonexistent. If you're using XP, establish a restore point immediately before you install Zone Alarm. If you have an earlier version of Windows good luck.

Not my experiences at all. I just told Zonealarm that anything in the trusted network was at medium security level, and everything on the internet was high, and I've never had a problem with file or printer sharing. It's three mouse clicks to set it up to work, if you changed it from the default where it allows sharing.

I also had ZoneAlarm muck up my network access.

Unless you're very novice, don't know what you're doing, or just plain dumb, you should not need a software firewall, if you have a hardware firewall.

Common sense, combined with prudent internet practices, will prevent most spyware from infecting your PC.


[This message has been edited by UALOneKPlus (edited Nov 20, 2003).]

Hardware firewalls that are incorporated in routers use a network address translation server that hides your networked computers' IP addresses from anyone outside your network. The theory of hardware firewalls is that you can�t attack what you can�t see. Hardware firewalls are highly configurable, or another way of saying highly confusing for most of us. There is no easy way to configure them because broadband providers use so many different configurations to get their signal to you. It�s a daunting task because you must know about ports and you must know how your ISP uses these ports and how to put this info together in specifying what your router is supposed to do.

Software firewalls are more like virus detectors. They can prevent Trojan horses, spyware, and backdoor software from sending and receiving data. They�re easier to configure but can cause severe problems if your network varies from what the designers of the firewall expect.

Once the software firewall is installed. You may not be able to reverse the process. And these free firewalls do not provide support.

By and large our protection is large numbers and little in our computers that anyone else wants.

Thanks for all the information.

Here are the (correct) links:

http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft/

http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/
Has somebody done this test? I had the XP firewall "ON", still the test found "NO FIREWALL" and switch it on!?!

Out of curiosity I tried the MS three step on a portable that is used as part of a ethernet and wireless network in a dental office. After I installed it, the network disappeared on the portable. I couldn't see the hard drives on any of the other machines and I couldn't see the network printer that is on it's own print server. I restored XP to the state immediately before the MS installation and everything was fine.

As far as I can tell, you install the thing and that's it. There are no options. It was real scary.

[This message has been edited by traveler123 (edited Nov 20, 2003).]

Whichever type of firewall you choose (I still believe both is the best) head over to Steve Gibson's (the Spinrite guy) at

www.grc.com

and have it do a test against your system, you may be amazed at how many holes you have left to plug up.

Fix what it tells you needs fixing, repeat until you are invisible.

[This message has been edited by cordelli (edited Nov 20, 2003).]

A hardware based firewall I think is better than a software one. But the software one is an additional layer if you want it. I don't run Sygate routinely but then I don't have to. My computer is pretty much invisible outside my firewall. I am sure there are ways to hack into it but I have taken reasonable steps in any event to secure it.

I don't quite see it that way. Script kiddies can use software that scans thousands of computers and finds the vulnerable ones, not to mention more sophisticated worms that people build using toolkits provided by a few brilliant trouble makers.

Together, this means we are all vulnerable to computer attack. There is a little so-called "security in obscurity" but not much.

Computer Associates is known as one of the most horrible companies to deal with in the entire software industry. One of their business programs is notorious for corrupting data. I divorced them 12 years ago, and 2 years ago, they bought the business program I am using. They pulled a lot of the features, doubled the price, and now require an additional 30% fee annually for Patches and minor upgrades(read bug fixes). At 60% support fee, you will be able to access a list of known bugs and fixes. For 90% of software fee annually, you can get telephone support.

Zone alarm is/was incompatable with a number of programs.

I have had excellent results with the AVG free anti-virus utility which can be found at:

http://www.grisoft.cz

It has weekly (and sometimes more frequent updates) and has immediately quarantined or destroyed the two viruses that got into my system in the past few years before they could do any damage.

A friend in the office tried AVG. Like most of us he didn't read the fine print before he downloaded the thing.

He started the download and it froze XP which is hard to do. Startled, he rebooted the machine and things were fine. Thankfully no trace of AVG.

A bit belatedly he read a little and discovered that the free version was designed only for stand alone computers. Networked machines, even simple peer to peer, must buy the premium version.