Symantec's Norton™ Personal Firewall 2004 keeps hackers out and personal data in. It makes robust firewall protection easy by automatically hiding your PC on the Internet and blocking suspicious connections. Norton Personal Firewall also protects your privacy by preventing confidential information from being sent out without your knowledge.

Can anyone explain how the portion I have in bold works, and how can it be proven?

I am also looking for some recommendations on firewall software.

I have had it up to my eyeballs with adware, spyware, hackers and hijackers! :mad: :banghead:

Thanks in advance for your expertise on this matter. :wave:

P.S. I reserve the right to have a mood swing right now!

:hopeless: :cookoo: :bonk: :mad: :biglaugh: :rolleyes:

Please limit posts to 1000 smilies or less. ;)

Nothing will be sent out, because your firewall will ask you, before it allows it. You won't even be able to connect to the net with your browser, without telling the firewall it's ok. Of course, you don't have to tell it every time, because you have the "don't ask me again" or similar checkbox.

So if there is some kind of program that you've unknowingly downloaded or whatever, it can't take any data from your HD and send it out without you telling the firewall it's ok.

Thanks Jethro! ;)

LOL.

There is a freeware firewall program called Zone Alarm (http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?lid=zadb_zadown). Like Norton's, it keeps data in and hackers out. I've been using it for 18 months without any problems.

Yeah, Sygate (http://www.sygate.com/) has a free version of their firewall that's good too.

zone alarm is not a good firewall. the reason it is free is because it is installs a lot of spyware and adware programs onto your computer. these programs basically track your habits over the internet for advertisers and some are even more insidious. they are also a drain on bandwidth and slow down you computer's performance. beware of free software and always read the small print in the license agreement.

The Norton Firewall works pretty well, but I've found that it sometimes blocks too much stuff. Even stuff that you request and want to see. But if you do not want to use Norton there's some free alternatives as the folks here have suggested. I bet you can find some more freeware firewalls at http://www.download.com/.

zone alarm is not a good firewall. the reason it is free is because it is installs a lot of spyware and adware programs onto your computer. these programs basically track your habits over the internet for advertisers and some are even more insidious. they are also a drain on bandwidth and slow down you computer's performance. beware of free software and always read the small print in the license agreement.

Yeah, I am aware that there are usually strings attached to free software. I have Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy to scan for and remove spyware. Now I don't have any problems at all.

I have found that Zone Alarm is a generally reliable program which hasn't caused me any problems.

Spybot Search and Destroy is great... I use it religiously.

I am a new Comcast broad Band Customer, and while I was checking the Comcast Customer service page I discovered that McAfee is offering Comcast users One free year of firewall protection! :yippee:

I am a new Comcast broad Band Customer, and while I was checking the Comcast Customer service page I discovered that McAfee is offering Comcast users One free year of firewall protection! :yippee:

Bonus! :bouncy:

Spybot Search and Destroy is great... I use it religiously.I would recommend using more than one Spayware/Adware remover. I have found that sometimes one misses something but the other one finds it, and vice versa.