Re: Is it possible for someone to access my HD even though I am running a firewall?

Jeff
Date: 10/31/05 

Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 21:10:14 +0000

On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 19:45:28 GMT, Leythos <void@nowhere.lan> wrote:

>A "personal" firewall is only as strong as the person that set it up. If
>you created exceptions (holes) then you really don't have a lot of
>protection. If you browse to a website and then click a link, you could
>be running a program without understanding that you are running it - and
>it could phone-home to the author of the program and allow them to do
>anything they want with your machine.
>
>If you have CABLE/DSL, get a NAT router with logging, this will block
>unsolicited inbound connections and the LOG will show you in/out bound
>traffic so you can see just what is reaching your computer and what is
>going outbound from it.
>
>So, in short, if you don't screw-up your firewall it will protect you,
>but many users self-compromise their security all the time by not
>understanding what they are doing.

Thanks for that. Is a NAT router a piece of software or a piece or
hardware? Sorry, I don't know much about this sort of thing.

I've cleared all my program permissions in Zonealarm and I'm going to
start again from scratch - I'm pretty sure that I only made exceptions
for things like my browser, email and news clients anyway - but it
doesn't hurt to start over and review everything.

So, if I do have some malware on my machine, what's the best way to
clear it up? My antivirus doesn't pick anything up, nor do any of my
spyware scanners. Any programs you can recommend?

Relevant Pages

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