Page 1 of Firewalls

Does anyone know if any of the free to download firewalls are any good or would I be better of buying one.I have just downloaded Zone Alarm and I would like to know if it`s any good or not.

I`ve been told of a few people that ZoneAlarm is one of the best you can get! I`ve never used it personally and to be honest I don`t really know what the difference is between them all. I use Norton Personal Firewall and it seems to do the job for me.

Just before I was warned that an attack had been blocked from a "Remote Access Trojan Horse". Is it worth tracing these attacks back and reporting them to their ISP or would I be wasting my time? This is the third one I`ve had in a week!

r8sso

hi m8te i use zone alarm and i can definitely recommend it the version i am using is version 3 beta if u wish to test your firewall out go to
http://grc.com then go to ShieldsUP! then run TEST MY SHIELDS AND
( ooo er ) PROBE MY PORTS this well put a test on your firewall and tell you how good or bad it is zone alarm got 100% stelth good enougth 4 me

It may be worth reporting. My machine was getting attacked from within my ISP by thier own people.

This item was edited on Sunday, 10th March 2002, 21:28

Ahem...thicky alert, thicky alert.

Can some kind soul please explain what a firewall is & if I need one. I do have anti-virus software installed on my machine, is this the same thing?

Cheers.

A `Firewall` is a piece of software (or hardware) which sits inbetween your pc and the internet. Its protects your pc from people/software from getting information, messing up your pc etc.

It does not replace virus software, but site along side protecting your pc.
Personally I use zonealarm (www.zonealarm.com) and found it v.good (plus its free for non companies). If you have adsl/isbn etc the pro version would be a must (but it costs cash)

I USE ZONE ALARM PRO AND IN MY OPINION IT OFFERS THE BEST PROTECTION THERE IS......WHEN LOADING KAZAA IT STOPPED OVER 30 ACCESS ATTEMPTS ON MY PC...NEEDLESS TO SAY DONT DOWNLOAD KAZAA

I`ve heard there are security problem with Zonealarm, but I use it anyway. I used to have both zonealarm and Sygate running but recently Sygate has decided to just block all internet traffic :(

<OB>

Ill second Zone Labs- Zone Alarm, Its FREE and does the job!

I bought Norton Personal Firewall and used for a few months but it just did not feel right. The configuration was messy as I have network and it intermittently blocked network connections between PCs. Sometimes I could copy files between the PCs,sometimes I had to disable the FireWall??

I then tried the free version of ZoneAlarm. Simply better and much more straightforward to configure. I used it for a week or two before paying the readies and upgrading to the Pro version.

One word of warning - if you decide to pay and upgrade to the Pro version make sure you choose the `Clean Install` option when installing. I used the `Upgrade` option and it all seemed to go OK. Once I had rebooted it stopped all Internet Activity and I just could not get it back. I had to uninstall, reinstall and choose the Clean Install option and all was OK. I had to reconfigure the thing, but that is pretty simple to do anyway. This happened on both my Laptop and PC!

This item was edited on Wednesday, 13th March 2002, 10:54