Can anyone tell which firewall is safe. Microsoft firewall or personal firewall from eg lavasoft, avg, or zlarm? Can anyone direct me to the firewall that is safe and no need to pay monthly subsription beside zlarm becos it always crash with my system.
The [bold]best[/bold] firewall is a hardware firewall. Even if you only have one computer in the house, get a router to hookup to (DSL/Cable connection). The router acts as a firewall. If you're on dialup, I've always heard that zone alarm was one of the best. If it crashes your system, you have a conflict somewhere......... Good luck!
Hardware and software firewalls are the best when used together. The primary limitation of hardware firewalls is that they provide no outbound protection, and, what with all the spyware and Windows phoning home, that's more important than the inbound protection. In any case, Jetico supposedly is free and good. Netpeeker is decent and has built-in Sponge spyware blockers. Kerio 2.1.5 is okay and has spyware and ad filters available too though I'd run it behind a router or hardware firewall as it is susceptible to some kinds of fragmented packet attacks. I use this.
