On 16 May 2003 at 18:40, Madeline L. Buchanan wrote:
> The technician told me that he does not use a firewall, even with a cable
> modem. I had used the free version of ZoneAlarm before having virus
> problems last winter and needing a way to stop email virus extensions and
> had never had a problem. However, the technician said that unless I keeping
> my banking or other personal information on my hard drive (which I don't), a
> firewall isn't really needed and can cause problems.
Oh my! While a firewall may cause problems - and if one
firewall isn't working with a particular configuration another
may - not having one leaves your computer open to anyone
with some basic hacking tools. Even if you don't keep your
personal information on the computer, do you really want
some hacker using _your computer as part of denial of
service attack or for other purposes? Your computer
should be _yours to control, not some hacker's!
If ZoneAlarm gives you problems, you could try Sygate
Personal Firewall (http://smb.sygate.com/default.htm) or
one of the non-freeware ones like Tiny Personal Firewall
or Nortons.
I've tried a couple of different ones and am currently using
Sygate (at home) because I too apparently had two IP
addresses, and Sygate seemed the best at closing
everything when I check my security over at Gibson
Research's "Shields Up" and "Leak Test" pgaes
(http://grc.com/default.htm).
Kathryn
--
Kathryn Frech, Librarian
Seton Catholic Central H.S.,
Binghamton, NY USA
kfrech@syrdiocese.org
http://www.tier.net/~scclibrary/
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