A good firewall

[Spax]

What's the best (preferably free) firewall to download? And I mean best as: fast, reliable, easy to use and most of all invisible (runs in background and doesn't bother me)???????

[powerless]

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/prod
ucts/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

[druiaghtagh]

If you are running Windows XP on your system , it already has a firwall in place

[powerless]

XP does have a firewall in place except that it only protects you from the inbound threats.** What you need is a firewall that protects you from both inbound and outbound threats. Outbound as in a trojan, XXX dialer etc. The XP firewall does not have this so you will not be protected. A third party firewall will give you the outbound protection (as well as the inbound). **Whilst you'll probably never get hacked, the XP firewall is not good as it only has the inbound protection. Windows XP Service Pack 2 is apparently going to have an updated firewall so that it has both in and outbound protection. So until then you need a third party firewall.

[gilf]

OK its not strictly true but normally things which are free are less likely to be secure than those which you pay for. You have to ask yourself how much is the information on My PC worth, for example I recently had some trouble with debit card fraud where loads of money went missing from my account which has cost me �200 in the short term and a load of hassle. I use Norton fire wall and its really good. It alerts you anytime a program tries to access the internet (this can be set to allow common programs access) or for that matter any communication port on your PC. Its only about �40 and comes with Anti Virus also. I'm not saying expensive is always the best but no I.T. company I have ever worked for has used a free firewall, also you wouldnt put a �2.50 lock on your front door just because it was cheap. When you do get a good firewall its a bit scary at the number of attacks you now see comming in or programs trying to get out.

[powerless]

Define "attacks"?