Chipo wrote:
>How effective is windows firewall?>>


Not very. It only monitors incoming data. Most decent firewalls monitor 
both incoming and outgoing data, and should give you information about any 
suspicious activity.

If, (as is almost inevitable these days despite the best precautions) you 
happen to unwittingly install or activate a piece of spyware or trojan 
along with a legitimate program, with XP firewall you would never see any 
unusual activity as the trojan sends out your personal data.

With a 2-way firewall such as Zone Alarm Free, it will alert you to any 
unauthorised outgoing activity. This puts you on alert that there might be 
something going on that you don't know about. Most trojans are otherwise 
invisible. The only sign that you have one might be a sudden slowing of 
your internet browsing as the trojan takes over your available band width.

The usual recommendations for free firewalls are Zone Alarm or Sygate 
Personal. Both have excellent credentials. Zone Alarm Pro will give you a 
lot more information---which might be overkill for many people. For basic 
protection, the free version is fine.

If you decide on ZA, it will run the pro version for 14 days and will then 
tell you it's expiring, to try to get you to pay for it. But if you say No, 
it will just revert to the basic free version.

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html

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