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Do You Really Need a Firewall

     - Saturday, August 30, 2003

After all, who's going to attack your little home computer?!? Well, the truth is that the average home computer is exactly the type of machine that hackers want to break into. Not because they're interested in fishing around in your financial statements (which they are). Rather, they want your machine because they want to use it to attack other computers. Sometimes they just want to use your computer to send out spam for them. Without much difficulty the average 16 year-old can sneak a computer program onto your machine that will allow them to control it (or at least use it for a whatever they want).

A software firewall, such as the free Zone Alarm from Zone Labs, will run on your computer. It's purpose is to control what programs can access the internet. If a program asks to connect to the internet, such as your email, then Zone Alarm pops up a message that asks you if you want to allow that program (your email in this case) access to the internet. If some program you don't recognize asks for access to the internet, you can just say no. Presto, you've blocked the nasty program from attacking some other computer.
Firewalls also do a whole lot to help keep that nasty program from getting on your machine in the first place too.

posted by Kevin Watts |  Permalink |