Re: Firewall

From: *** Lane (webegeeks_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 06/30/03 

Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 08:29:57 -0500

"Fridgeman" <allumt@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:002301c33e4a$786d31f0$a101280a@phx.gbl...
> I would like a recommendation for a Firewall product, have
> you used one, does it work and is it user friendly. I am a
> little confused with all the products out there.

I sent this the other day, but it did not show up. Probably in the switch
over from att to comcast it got lost in the excitement.
------------------------------------
lots of choices to be sure. some are free and some aren't. some control
just inbound and some control both inbound and outbound. Some provide easy
logs and others provide confusing logs.

Black Ice is a pretty user friendly product but doesn't provide much
outbound control. Norton provides both outbound and inbound controls, but
heaven help you if you use McAfee antivirus and norton firewall, takes about
an hour to get it configured so they work together. (when norton does it's
program search, it ignores McAfee so you must manually allow it). Had
problems a couple of years ago with mcafee firewall and have heard some
negative things so I can't recommend it - though I do love their anti virus
product.

There are some free products out there, but my personal opinion is not to
use them. I don't like 'free'. Nothing is 'free'. I don't know who
writes it, I don't know who updates it, and I am not smart enough to know if
there is some hanky panky going on.

So, overall, I'd recommend Norton for the firewall, norton or mcafee for
virus, then get Ad Aware to monitor spyware and Guard IE on internet
explorer to control popups, cookies, and temp files.

All these are personal opinions and subject to rabid disagreement from
others.