Best free firewall

[tony mcscaff]

What do you think is the best free firewall and easy to use

[Buenchico]

The majority of the 'regulars' around here in AB's Technology section (myself included) use Zone Alarm Free Edition:
http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company /products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp
(NB: Use the blue link on the right. The more prominent link on the left takes you to a time-limited trial of their full security suite).

However there are also plenty of fans of Comodo:
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/
(Use the left-hand, grey link)

A firewall is basically a very simple piece of software which just closes a few unnecessary ports and ensures that only authorised programs are allowed internet access. Unlike anti-virus programs (which require frequent updates and can vary in effectiveness) firewalls just need to be installed and largely forgotten about. So there's very little to choose between them. I'm perfectly happy with Zone Alarm (which is very easy to install and use) but I'm sure that Comodo could do the job just as well.

Chris

[tony mcscaff]

Thank you Buenchico for a very informative answer I am now downloading the Comodo firewall only, as I have avg has my virus protection programme, Thanks again

[VHG]

>firewalls just need to be installed and largely forgotten >about.

I would say this is not quite true (for me and my family anyway).

The "problem" with firewalls is that once you have said "ok" to alow a program to access the internet it can go on accessing the internet for ever without anyone knowing about it.

If this is a piece of spyware you have given it freedom to go on doing its nasty work without you being aware of it.

My family (wife and 2 children) are not very technical and whenever the firewall asks if a program can acces the interent they say "yes" without really knowing what they are saying yes to.

Every so often I go into Zone Alarm and look at the list of all the programs given access to the internet, and research any that look a bit dodgy.

After that I select EVERY program that has been given access to the interent and DELETE it from ZoneAlarm.

That way the firewall starts with a clean sheet and the list of programs allowed access to the interent stays quite small.

I think it is a good idea to "clear out" your list of programs in the firewall every now and again to make sure no dodgy program has sneaked through.

[tony mcscaff]

Thanks VHG for very good advice will take it on board