Can anyone recommend a good FREE firewall utility?
 

Hi there :) I've just been to Download.com and there seem to be 100's of the things on there ... I just need a good recommendation ... or maybe two ;)


Thanks.

How about ZoneAlarm?

Hi there, Thanks for that ... is it good? do you use it? and does it work ok under WinXP?

zonealarm
 

its what i use under xp. works fine for my purposes and is mich nicer than the one microsoft ships with xp.

~james

ZoneAlarm is just about the best thing you can get for free. It's pretty much what everybody uses.

ZoneAlarm works great on my 2000 Pro box. It works like a charm. Go with it.

Nw What?
 

Okay, so I have this firewall thingy. (it's not zonealarm, it's one of the major brand ones, which my cable internet provider has hooked me up with a free year of ... (doesn't actually take the sting out of the obscene amount of money I'm paying for the really fast connection, but hell, it's something.

How do I tell what's the bad probes (other than the really obvious ones that report things like "probe for sub7 trojan blocked") that I should be clicking the report button for and what's the innocuous ones, or ones legitimately generated ... there's a bunch that appear to arise from various nodes operated by my provider for example ... :confused:

The most interesting information you get out of your firewall is which pieces of software want to act as servers. Most of the reports of attempted breakins you don't need to worry about; most of them are people twisting doorknobs, and in most cases your system isn't really breachable anyway, even without a firewall.

But you never know.

But pay close attention to what software wants to do what. Sometimes you'll learn what's spyware; more importantly you'll find out if you've been explicitly "trojan horsed" somewhere along the line.

It also helps to learn what ports are used for what services. If you know that, then the logfiles make a little bit more sense.

Zone Alarm isn't the best
 

I used to have zone alarm I even broke down and paid for the Zone alarm Pro. But since then i've switched to <a href="http://www.Kerio.com">Kerio</a> It allows better acces to your port usage, and being on a network is a little more secure, you can also (even on the Free version) you can set permissions, there are other things that make it nicer but you should go to their web site to see all the details. And Yes it runs across all platforms.<p>The fire wall that gives me the most protection though is my Router. If you have bought a (quality) router in the past 2 years then it automaticaly has one built into it and to see your settings you type in your web brouser the IP address of your router, Wich you can get by running a trace route in your command prompt.