Go to Gibson Research Corporation for a ton of security related info. He recommends Zone Alarm (and its free), you were wise not to go with Black Ice. A great cleaner tool is something called Evidence Eliminator, admittedly a creepy sounding name, but it does a great job on my pc of cleaning cookies, unwanted temporary files, and a whole host of other hard drive cleaning tasks.

you oculd have downloaded zonealarm for free...

ZoneLabs has the ZoneAlarm firewall.

And, it is free.  And it is excellent.
http://www.zonelabs.com/
 

To test your firewall, you can try Shields Up at
http://grc.com/
This site has good information about computer privacy.
 

thanks everyone ... I'll check out ZoneAlarm ...

I ran the tests ... looks like McAfee 3.0 passed with flying colors ... I will check out the ZoneAlarm for I have multiple machines ... appreciate everyone's input ... we need to keep telling people about this stuff ...

What about virus scanners? Can anyone help me on what is the best new program to buy?

Just a quick note: the 3.0 vs. 2.1 numbering system doesn't mean much across different product.
Myself I have a spare Linux box so I have iptables on there. Course it requires a lot of knowledge of the command line and what exactly is going on, but I'm a computer person anyway.

i recently read that norton AV 2002 was good/easy to use.
i purchased it and have had no problems.
FWIW, i am running win2000.

Gibson is a know-nothing flim-flam media whore. Please do not frequent his web site or listen to anything he has to say.

• Zone Alarm is a good product -- free for personal use.
• Tiny Firewall is good and free for personal use.
• Sygate is pretty good and free for personal use.

Norton AV is excellent and works with 2000 & XP

I have had the McAfee Firewall for awhile and it is perfectly OK (I originally bought its predecessor from Signal9). I also have the McAfee anti-virus which gives free updates. PS I am a Norton fan but I like these two McAfee programs better than the Norton counterparts.

Gibson is a know-nothing flim-flam media whore.

Oh, please. Envy is such a time waster.

Thanks. I'll check it out.

You mention having several machines. Networked? Sharing an Internet connection? Broadband or dialup?

Answers to these questions will help you get better recommendations.

MM

"Gibson is a know-nothing flim-flam media whore."

Granted, he's taken to doing all his talking through a bullhorn as of late, but a "know-nothing"? Hardly. He wrote Spinrite, which saved countless "trashed" hard drives back in the Olden Dayse of MFM and RLL with dead-reckoning head positioners. His software was able to do things that were theoretically impossible to do without analog hardware, and it did them well. And, it was all written in raw assembler.

Hardly the earmarks of a "know-nothing."

I just received Norton System Works 2002 with Norton Personal Firewall. I have been using System Works for several years but not PF. Any critiques? Things I should know about it?

Personally I use a combination of Black Ice and Norton PF on one of my PCs and Black Ice and Zone Alarm on another. Black Ice uses different technology to detect intruders than other software firewalls. I find the newer version of Norton to be annoying with its constant prompts for permission to access the web. Zone Alarm does this as well but does not seem as annoying. I purchased the version of Black Ice that you referred to and simply updated it much like you would with a Norton product. Zone Alarm is free and Norton is about $50. I also have a router that acts as a hardware firewall. It also alows me to have several PCs connected to high speed access simultaneously.

Much of the criticism of Black Ice comes from testing outbound traffic. It is not designed to block that. It is designed to keep malicious programs from getting into your system. I believe that it does a better job of that than other programs. Trojan horses and viruses only work if they are on your system, the point is to stop them from getting there.

On my wife's PC I just put the Norton products on because it is easier for her to do just one update, making it simpler for her to use.

Also make sure you have a good ant-virus software package running as well.

Based on test results that I have seen Norton is about the best for virus defense. Another good one is Kaspersky but it is only available on the web.

Most of the firewall products out there are pretty good but you have to remember to update them (check often).

Can anyone help me on what is the best new program to buy?

Norton Seems to be the best. I run Norton 2001 at home and just implemented Norton Corporate Edition 7.5 at work.

Norton 2001 seemed to consume less resources than Mcafee at the house.
At work, rollout and administration is easier and provides tighter protection than Mcafee. Clients can't uninstall it without a password, you can lock options at the server and scheduled scans and updates actually work on time. I never could get Mcafee to operate reliably.

dial-up, NetBios 10mb hub LinkSys ... but I rarely run the network since I don't often need all machines talking ...