Hack #99. Surround Yourself with a Firewall

Protecting yourself from incoming and outgoing threats is easy with personal firewall software.

The great thing about the Internet is that it allows connectivity between millions of users anywhere in the world at any time. The bad thing about the Internet is that it allows connectivity between millions of users anywhere in the world at any time. Expecting your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to protect your PCs from the Internet's hacker community is like expecting your local police and fire departments to prevent burglaries, speeding, traffic collisions, and house fires—it is simply not going to happen. ISPs and Internet users are on the defensive; there are too many opportunities for bad things to propagate on the Internet for them to be effectively proactive.

Personal/desktop firewalls exist to filter a variety of connections, applications, and content from getting into or out of your PC. Windows XP (pre-Service Pack 2) comes with a firewall of its own, the Internet Connection Firewall (ICF), but it is perhaps the least documented, least understood, and least effective PC network protection tool created. ICF does not provide significant control over types of connections (client or server features) nor over abuse by programs that want to get out to the Internet. You deserve better.

Tip

XP Service Pack 2 adds a Security Center to Windows that contains a new Windows Firewall that is more robust than ICF, providing the ability to block ...

Get PC Hacks now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.