Firewalls and Modems--No Need?

  • Thread starter Thread starter W. Watson
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W. Watson

I went into a store to buy firewall for a P3 PC with a modem that I'm
working on for a neighbor. I knew several people were pretty savvy with PCs,
so asked them for a suggestion. The first one was why bother? Who really is
going to try to invade a PC that is connected by a firewall? They may have a
good point. Comments?
 
I went into a store to buy firewall for a P3 PC with a modem that I'm
working on for a neighbor. I knew several people were pretty savvy with PCs,
so asked them for a suggestion. The first one was why bother? Who really is
going to try to invade a PC that is connected by a firewall? They may have a
good point. Comments?
Click to expand...

A firewall is a very good idea with either dialup or broadband. To
compare go to www.grc.com and run Shields Up! with and without your
firewall to see the difference. You don't need to buy one, there are
a few freeware firewalls that do the job well.
 
You say you were going to buy a firewall, software or hardware?
Then say 'that is connected by a firewall' that all makes little sense.
But then perhaps you mean a pc that is connected to a NAT enabled reuter,
which is not quite the same as a firewall.

Its not quite so much down to being invaded, but the user who installs a
trojan, which can then reach out.
In any case a software firewall solution can be freely downloaded. ZoneAlarm
being one such.
 
W. Watson said:
I went into a store to buy firewall for a P3 PC with a modem that I'm
working on for a neighbor. I knew several people were pretty savvy
with PCs, so asked them for a suggestion. The first one was why
bother? Who really is going to try to invade a PC that is connected by
a firewall? They may have a good point. Comments?
Click to expand...


Unpretected hex is suicide. I don't care if it's running DOS 3.0, you
run a hardware firewall or you are taking risks.

OK, the risks may be very small, depending on the OS. I ran 98se for
years without, did just fine, and only had to have one when I switched
to w2k (in which case it is absolutely mandatory).
 
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