Don, personally I don't shut off my firewall when I go on messenger for the
very reason you expressed concern about.

I was shocked recently when a friend wanted me to install ICQ - in order to
use it I had to allow all sorts of things to pass through my firewall.  I
uninstalled the sucker.  AIM requires being pretty unprotected, too, so I
don't use that either.

From what I've seen no IM program is safe safe safe, but Yahoo's preferences
you can stipulate how or if you want others to be able to share files plus
there's a place to select your AV program files so that any files anyone
sends through it are scanned right then and there.  So that's something.
There have been times where I was trying to send or receive a picture while
chatting with a friend (in Yahoo) and one of us got a prompt about one of
our firewalls preventing the file being transferred, but it's weird - that
doesn't seem to be consistent in any way, it just seems to happen sometimes,
even with people that there haven't been prior problems with.  If that
happens we just use e-mail instead.  Yahoo doesn't allow very large files
transfers anyway, I've tried to send a song to someone and sound files are
just too huge, so things like pictures and other small stuff that mails well
is about it anyway.  I consider this small nuisance at best considering the
tradeoff of being able to have my firewall running and protecting me as I
chat.  I would not DREAM of shutting off my AV, ever, for anything.  If I am
online that sucker is up and running.  Period.

I realize that this is off the subject and that the whole reason you brought
it up was from a resources standpoint.  Nonetheless I wanted to discuss this
just a bit because I find that a lot of people just don't realize how IM
programs can be an easy way into their systems.  It can be quite a serious
vulnerability if not addressed.  I know quite a few people feel they're
hopelessly insecure period and refuse to use them, but this is one of those
personal decision things.  I have my IM set up to only do certain things in
certain ways and feel that the ability to communicate directly is worth it.

I also have MSN messenger but rarely use it.  I am troubled by the frequent
number of upgrades there.  One doesn't HAVE to upgrade, but unless I'm very
much mistaken M$ has done something so that if you don't upgrade you have
lots of problems, like suddenly being logged off repeatedly.  Could be my
imagination, though.  The thing is, with all this stuff I hear about XP
tracking that MS has built in as well as the whole Magic Lantern thing the
FBI is doing and how many soft-and hardware companies are going along with
it, it just seems to me like there are a number of things that are being set
up so that we have less and less privacy.  I just don't like it and find
myself not having a great deal of faith in MS's ethics in general.  So in
spite of all sorts of things I don't like about the Yahoo company I find
myself using their IM almost exclusively as the least of all evils.


Mary Mc Donald

I don't  know whether a firewall would interfere with voice transmission at
all---I imagine you'd need to disable that, too, and your anti-virus.

Which raises some interesting questions---how vulnerable or secure is your
computer whilst engaged in this?

      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
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