It's not the SYSTEM but it's the USER whose the problem

MadMatt said:

you know, you made me laugh

oh, Atleast there was some use from my post

bigmck said:

ultraplanet said:

jimbo45 said:

3) Never use an online shopping system that REQUIRES you to register on their site.

I am curious how this is even possible? Doesn't amazon, newegg, overstock, buy .... well .... everybody require you to register?

I do alot of shopping online. You can put your name, address and email on the vendor site and pay through Paypal. I also pay all my monthly bills online. Never to the individual site but all through my bank. This way I only have to trust Paypal and my bank, not ten different sites.

That's what I'm talking about, you do need an antivirus unless you barely do anything on the internet or never use removable media to transfer data (almost everybody does).

If you're not using the internet to download porn, pirated music, games or movies, don't keep your computer connected to the internet 24 hours a day, are not connected to network with other computers, and clean your system regularly, I see no real need for anything more than the windows firewall and defender. MSE at the most. Just use a little common sense.

madtownidiot said:

If you're not using the internet to download porn, pirated music, games or movies, don't keep your computer connected to the internet 24 hours a day, are not connected to network with other computers, and clean your system regularly, I see no real need for anything more than the windows firewall and defender. MSE at the most. Just use a little common sense.

Maybe better leave it unboxed? This way you don't need even Firewall and Defender.

Hi all

Actually for a HOME computer I've never seen the reason for a Firewall - usually gets in the way when testing networking etc etc.

If you have a decent ROUTER which blocks all open Inward coming ports except the ones you allow like RDP I'm not sure what actual use the firewall is.

For a Corporate or business scenario with Interconnected networks then it's a different ball game.

Something like MSE will prevent unauthorised changes to registry etc etc.

Cheers
jimbo

severedsolo said:

well i use Zone Alarm Personal Firewall basically because it tells you whenever something tries to "phone home" and block it, its amazing how many things try to connect to the internet during installation, example games, nearly all the installers try to phone home without needing to, Windows Firewall lets them through because it trusts them, ZA asks each and every time

Hi there
I usually install stuff on a Virtual machine first with NO internet connection.

If the software works "as it says on the tin" then I'll migrate it to a real machine.

I'm not a gamer so I don't have the problem with games "phoning Home" every so often but even here you can set your router (at least decent routers) to only allow certain programs through -- hardware firewall.

IMO this sort of stuff is done much better by the hardware since it's unlikely a hacker would be able to get into the router's Bios.

Decent Routers these days have this facility built in together with decent logging so you don't need an EXTRA windows firewall.

Cheers
jimbo