Quote: CattyNebulart wrote:... to which I point out, that's what your router is for.
I disagree, multilayered defenses are better, and more importantly many of the better firewalls (like zonealarm) give you the option of stopping outgoing
traffic.
If you're NATted, you need not worry about incoming traffic (excepting things like drive-by installs and whatnot, which a firewall won't stop anyway;
that's your AV/anti-spyware package's job).
If you're interested in blocking outbound traffic, I'd have to ask why. I mean, if your AV/AS software is working as designed, and you're not
trying to catch every bit of malware out there (and thus getting stuff they don't know how to handle yet), then
the only outgoing traffic from your PC is going to be stuff you originate. Why would you want to block that?
If it's a case of wanting to filter some outbound traffic (for example, if I wanted to, I dunno, keep my kid from
serving up files via BitTorrent or something), that's a job better suited to your router, again. A software firewall on the same machine it's intended
to protect is already in a compromised situation -- the user can simply turn it off, for example. For laptops and wifi it's the best of a bad lot, so you
still use it. For a home network it simply makes no sense.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs