It blocks outside sources from accessing the files inside my computer, and I'm amazed at this........so far today 6 times it prevented that from happening. It even displays their IP address. He also installed a link to a website called "who is" { http://www.arin.net/whois/ } where I can type in the IP address of the culprits and it tells me where they originate from. I got a few from Sprint and one from some unified court system.........I'm going to be following these closely, I take violations of my computer privacy very seriously. I'm no computer genius, but I'm sure having fun with this one. :Brow:
I've been on for about four hours today. Just checked the firewall stats. Over 2400 intrusion attempts. On average I get hit about once a minute so that sounds normal. Maybe it's worse in China, hard to say. You should also be scanning your system with adaware and spybot search every so often just to make sure nothing gets by somehow in email or some other way.
When on my Windoze 2000 box, I use Kerio Personal Firewall (free version) - but get the same thing. The one thing that surprized me at first is that the windoze kernel and other M$ services try to contact the web all by themselves, without me doing a thing. Of course I blocked them - but I found it strange that my computer tried to contact M$ in the first place.
Truzi - I'm no expert, but error reports, updates, and other activites will cause MS Win XXX to "phone home". - Bill
I run adaware often and the amount of unwanted files there surprise me also.........about 10 or 20 per week. Sign up for free downloads and the number goes even higher. Once I downloaded free smiley software and it slowed my computer down to a crawl, the unwanted files would come back as fast as I could delete them. Music file sharing programs can do that also. :spank:
I had ZA and ZApro, got tire of them eventually. I don't have government secrets on my computer and no one in my house works for the cia so the novelty eventually wore off. Getting "hit" is really normal, it can be alot of things. The only time you ever need to really "worry" is when you get more than 5 hits from the same ip on different ports, then it's time for the warning bell to go off.
True, but this would happen on a clean install, auto updates turned off, when idling, etc. Seemed to happen at regular intervals too. Sometimes my machine would attempt to contact MS, sometimes it was the other way around. mechacode: A firewall will help keep some malware and worms out.
Use the right browser, don't go to "odd" sites and don't open attachments from people you don't know. It's worked for me for over 11 months now, not a single problem so far.
I do that - I've been online since 95, never use antivirus software, and have been on Mozilla Firefox for over a year now. The only problems I've had were Code Red and Nimda a few years ago (on dialup no less) - these were worms. They run from an infected computer, and randomly try to find other machines online to infect. No websites or downloads need be involved. That's why I started running a firewall. (Now I'm primarily on Linux, though. I keep the Windoze box to stay current b/c I do some tech support.) Too bad MS can't get the patches out as fast as the exploits appear. Especially for the dial-up crowd.
