firewalls, kinda long question

[Maanbvana]

Ok first im going to say i loved to read about the whole zombie/winxp thing on h**p://grc.com/ and it was quite informative,

But heres the deal, i have gotten my adsl and i have been trying out different firewalls, (i have win2k)
i have mainly tried norton personall firewall, zonealarm and black ice defender.

I have seen that many of u like ZoneAlarm but i found it to be at tad too , well, i dont know, i guess i dont really need a big red stop button :) plus i feel that the program was a bit more suited for use in a network of computers.

Black Ice, it felt better, not soo overworked and more eazy too use altho not as effektive, but after reading that artikle i really dont feel like getting a zombie on my comp ;) plus he said that black ice isnt good so i belive him. (i havent actually used it, but have seen it and how it works on a friends comp)

Norton, was alot better i think, a clean look and good sequrity options, plus i like that little ball/globe thing that pops out to tell me when a prog is accesing the internet. plus easy live update thing.

But what do u people think about Nortons firewall, is it good , is it bad, should i try that "Little Firewall" program?

any ideas,
i dont have a problem with setting up a firewall unless having to mess with very advanced settings, so i dont think any of them is to hard for me , i only whant to know wich one is the best :)
(not an easy question)

ps, im glad to have found this site, its really good and useful, thanx

[DIDS]

First of all Welcome To Speedguide!

I had BlackIce and never renewed my License, because I wanted something that mointored both inbound and outbound traffic. I now have ZoneAlarm, and I like it. You dont have to have that Big red stop button on your taskbar. Just dont show the ZoneAlarm Deskband. Zonealarm is simple to configure and does a great job. In fact I ran both BI and Zonealarm together at one point. Zonealarm always picked everything up before BI did. BI never saw any traffic because ZoneAlarm got to it first. Try ZoneAlarm its free and you can always get something esle if you dont like it.

[Juggernaut]

Welcome to Speedguide.net

BlackIce Defender isn't to great since it only detects incoming threats, not outgoing. Like with Norton's, it asked u if u wanted that particular program to access the net or not, BlackIce does NOT do that. It's more of an intrusion detection than anything. If you had installed a trojan on u'r computer, and it tried to access the net, BlackIce would not stop it.

Norton Personal Firewall is an ok firewall, but it is not best. I doesn't really protect you to the extent of some other firewalls. Some people have noticed holes in the firewall as well. Plus Norton likes to "call home" a lot and it is a bit of a memory hog.

ZoneAlarm is one of the best firewalls due to it's simplicity and it's effectiveness. It will block both incoming and outgoing threats, but you cannot customize it and control how it works that well. ZoneAlarm Pro is more customizable than ZA. Both will provide you with very good protection.

Sygate Personal Firewall (http://www.sygate.com) is another very good free firewall, along the lines of ZoneAlarm. Sygate it more customizable than ZA and you have more control over it...plus it is also FREE. It will provide you with very good protection.

Tiny Personal Firewall (http://www.tinysoftware.com) is a very nice firewall and free. It is by far the most customizable of the software firewalls that I mentioned, and you can control it to a much greater extent, because you set your own Rulesets. However, if you don't have a pretty good knowledge of how Firewalls work, this probably isn't the best one for you. Because, like I said, you have to set the rules to what gets in and what gets out. It can be more advanced than you think.

So I would recommened either getting ZoneAlarm or Sygate for the easier of use, or Tiny Personal Firewall if you have a greater knowledge and want to control it more. If all of these are set up correctly, they will provide you with about the best protection a software firewall can provide. For more money, you could go a hardware firewall, which means another piece of equipment, but greater security.

You should also get a good antivirus program, like InoculateIT PE at http://antivirus.cai.com
I'm not sure if they are still giving it away or not.

[Joe]

If you want a real firewall use the one in Win2k ... it will take a long time to configure and you will probably be tweaking it for a long time but its very good.

[Maanbvana]

thanx to all of you for answering

i might try sygate :) and i will forget Black Ice ,

but about norton, yes i noticed that it keeps doing strange stuff like sending info to the live update, but i dont know if they are thet type of company to screw u over , plus i guess i could allways add a rule not to allow contact, (?)

but about the rules in Tiny, are they very different from nortons rule configuration?

I some how feel like i wanna use ZoneAlarm as a last resort, i dont know why but i do

I right now have Black Ice installed to look at the config options but they aint too great, but it has blocked alot of port scans and trojan port scans such as netbus and subseven

But i think ill install norton trial again and maybe look into sygate or maybe even mccaffe in the morning or maybe Tiny, hmm,
im having a hard time choosing

ps, thanx for the warm welcomes :)

[Maanbvana]

man is this stupid, i downloaded sygate personal firewall and are using it,
i notice the test button and press it, i get connectedt to a web page that test/scans my system,
the funny thing is that it reports that my sequrity is bad and that some probes got thru, so they say, why not install sygate personal firewall now and point me to a download button,
hahah, i allreday got it installed and are using it, and the sequrity level is set to normal,
do thay whant me to set the level to block all??

this is stupid, :)

it look like im going to use norton after all, but i do like the list of running programs that sygate has,

but i guess ill have to settle with norton

[Maanbvana]

oh, and i looked into "Tiny" but it seems as someone was right about it needing a bit to much configuration,
i mean i could probebly get it to work but i dont feel like spending al my time tweaking a firewall :)

and i tried Ad-aware now and it found and remowed 32 items :)


hmm, i wonder if mccaffes firewall is good, but nah, i have tried too many as it is, i will simply stop now and continue using norton ,

cheers

[Maanbvana]

hmm, i think i removed sygate and installed norton again before i ran Ad-aware so i dont know, but if it would have contained spyware then that would be another reason not to use it :)


And ok, every body is really loving ZoneAlarm in this forum, hehe, so i will tell you what, im going to re-install Zonealarm and take a closer look, and maybe i will see that it really is alot better then the other progs like norton :)

and thanx again to all of u , cheers

[Storm90]

Maanbvana, Do not use the new version of sygate , Thats at there download site at this time. It has a lot of spyware in it and adware will not pick it up. You can check this out at www.freewareposse.com I would either use tiny or zonealarm If you are looking for free firewall. I have last years version of sygate. There is no differance in their protection accept . The newer version is more compact and full of spyware. GoodLuck!;)

[Maanbvana]

damnit, just when i feelt good about using Norton Personall firewall i happened to take a closer look at Steve Gibsons site and his different tests, well i found out that norton could be eazy too fool by trojans that change file name, damn
and i tried his leak test too find out that he is correct,
well seeing how im still on trial period with norton i will really try using Tiny and if that is to complex i guess i will have to use ZoneAlarm even tho i hate the way it looks.