See how efficient your Firewall is!

[Gary]

I agree with you So, but sandboxie can be a pain for some to deal with, no script is great I agree but once again its not for everyone, using webmail is no guarantee, Gmail recently had vulnerabilitys so even webmail is not impervious, my firewall in Kaspersky has a netmonitor which is very useful, but also having outbound protection just stops you having some programs phoning home when you don't want them to, and to be honest since the likes of Norton and Mcthingy are the prevalent masters of all for the less aware the fact they have bad leak testing capabilities kind of puts shot to all of that, leaving my mother with no way to understand no script, and sandboxie so disabling all flash and javascript is the best option and have no rich content, and then most websites break, the net is a double edged sword with little protection from penetration sometimes

[somanyholes]

Hey

Phoning home is another good reason for sure As people have said, different people have different ways of doing things. I think the main thing comes down to, this question.

if you wanted to see what network activity is happening right now, how would you do it, and would you have the tools/knowledge to be able to do it.

On the usability front, would people rather have to spend some time learning how to secure their systems or spend the time later dealing with infections, loss of business etc ...

[Gary]

The answer to that one is yes I have the tools and some of the knowledge , looking at my net monitor I can see established connections open ports and traffic, I do not fully understand  tcp and udp firewall rules completely but enough to get me by at least and without making problems for myself so far, and learning more as time goes on

[somanyholes]

Hey Kill

Didn't just mean you mate, it's a question I think people should ask themselves, and if they answered no, then do something about it 

[Gary]

I know  but just wanted to answer anyway 

[somanyholes]

maybe of interest to those who don't use outbound protection firewalls

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System
http://www.tucows.com/preview/213738
http://www.netlimiter.com/

[jupiter]

I also test with Shields Up and with the 2Wire 2700 got all clear so am satisfied that that's enough for me.. with a good antivirus application as well of course.

You reminded me of Shields Up and I too got an all clear.  One page interested me - the one giving the reverse DNS of my IP address, using the format "custxxx-dslxx.idnet.com".  The commentary said that this address is either permanently allocated by the ISP to one's computer, or changes in different sessions.  What does IDNet do?

Clearly the former is creating a continuous record of one's internet activity which is not anonymised.  Here come all the neuroses again!

[Rik]

IDNet IP addresses are static, Jupiter, so the former applies.

[somanyholes]

eeek, added a wrong link earlier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System is not meant to be there,

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx is meant to be there.

[madasahatter]

Tut at poor linkage - hang your head in shame holey 

[Rik]

Where is Shame, remind me. Is it north of Watford?? 

[madasahatter]

Where is Shame, remind me. Is it north of Watford?? 

"There be dragons" 

[Rik]

 

Ah, so west rather than north then...

[Niall]

The trouble with these sort of tests is that most firewall companies have the naughty solution of finding out how the tests work, and blocking what it looks for, in effect giving false readings. Blackice got a slating for that a few years ago.

Oh and Norton is awful. It gives the impression it's doing a lot, but the firewall has a LOT of false positives and the antivirus is just a joke really. Another thing about it is that it hammers your system. Try using windows firewall and AVG, then install Norton and see how fast your PC runs then. It's like being thrown backwards 10 years, the PC runs so slowly.

I used it once for a year when I had it free with a new graphics card (odd thing for it to be bundled with, I know). My system at the time was top end, so the performance dent wasn't an issue, until I bought a few new games towards the end of that year.

[Rik]

Another Norton 'fanatic', eh Niall. Any program that makes it next to impossible to remove it cleanly should not be allowed near a computer, imo. I used to run Norton, but when I switched to NOD it was like upgrading the CPU.

[talos2]

It's a shame really Norton used to be the best in the old DOS and Win 3.1 days, but now it's become more "bloatware".

[Rik]

Back on Compuserve, Norton and McAfee gave all sysops free copies of their AV software. It was on-demand scanning then, of course, and I was a Norton fan. Lately, of course, it's become more bloated and more resource consuming.

[Gary]

The latest Norton versions have tried to make themselves appear less bloated by not installing antispam, ad blocking and pop up blocking and privacy control, ad blocking should make browsing faster but they have dropped that part completely leaving my mother at the mercy of click and corrupt the firewall is awful for leak tests but great as it pre configures itself for almost all available programs on the outgoing side and is quite hard to kill, and its detection ratings are great now sometimes beating Nod32 and kaspersky and Sophos in the VB comparatives test, if only they updated them more than every 10 years, well that's how it feels on her machine, but to be honest with a fast modern machine its the ideal holding hands solution for net users with little understanding of security, its pretty good at spyware detection as well so it can't be knocked to hard as its better than leaving some of these people with a suite they cant understand or a bunch of separate applications they never update which is invariably what happens.

[Rik]

The lesser of the evils, eh Gary?

[Gary]

The lesser of the evils, eh Gary?

Indeed Rik

[somanyholes]

the norton coporate av does work quite well, as all the bloatware has been removed. It's the home/soho users that get the worst products. Marketing is evil if you ask me.

as far as antivirus manufacturers cheating by using definitions, most now provide more than just definition based scanning due to the fact that it became very popular at one point to get a virus, modify the code by adding a few bytes then releasing it into the wild.

[Gary]

the norton coporate av does work quite well, as all the bloatware has been removed. It's the home/soho users that get the worst products. Marketing is evil if you ask me.

as far as antivirus manufacturers cheating by using definitions, most now provide more than just definition based scanning due to the fact that it became very popular at one point to get a virus, modify the code by adding a few bytes then releasing it into the wild.

Signature and heuristics is the way forward indeed 

[talos2]

Been trying the Online Armour, seems OK but it does slow down the system somewhat, anyone else use it ?

Update---
                      Ive took it out, it does slow down the browser. Replaced it with Commodo which seems very good, time will tell.

[Noreen]

Replaced it with Commodo which seems very good, time will tell.

Talos, which version of Comodo?

[talos2]

Hi Noreen
                   Version3
                                       2.4.18.184
                     Seems to do the job, but I've not had a threat to test it against