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Did you know? If you access the Internet without having a firewall
turned on, your computer could be attacked by hackers, viruses,
spyware and adware.
You should at least have a software-based firewall installed on
your computers and turned on, before making the connection to the
Internet. The best Internet protection you can get for computers
is a hardware-based firewall, also known as a router. Routers hide
your computers from the Internet by implementing network address
translation (NAT).
Firewalls provide excellent protection against many viruses, adware,
spyware and malware programs, by preventing those types of malicious
programs from being able to automatically download themselves from
the Internet onto computers. Malicious programs are able to infect
computers that do not have a firewall installed on them, by scanning
the computers for open ports, and once an open port is found, the
malicious program automatically downloads itself onto that computer
through that open port. Firewalls block open ports and prevent malicious
programs from being able to get into computers.
Did you know? Firewalls can block you from accessing your own network
resources, including the Internet!
Firewalls are great, but if not properly configured, they can cause
many problems on a home network. For instance, games that used to
work fine begin to start crashing (freezing) the computer, problems
sending and receiving e-mail begin to surface, problems viewing
web pages (The page cannot be displayed... Cannot find
server) start happening, other computers start disappearing
from the network and shared folders/files can no longer be accessed
(Access denied. You might not have permission...,
Contact the network administrator..., etc.).
If you are experiencing problems after installing one of the firewalls
listed below, walkthrough the applicable tutorial and learn how
to configure the firewall so that it does not cause any further
problems on your computer or network of computers.
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BlackICE™
eTrust™ Personal Firewall:
McAfee Personal Firewall Plus:
Norton Internet Security Personal Firewall:
Panda Platinum 2006 Internet Security Firewall
Trend Micro PC-cillin™ Internet Security 2006 Personal Firewall:
ZoneAlarm:
