It might be useful to know a little about firewalls.
As soon as a computer goes online, it leaves itself open to attacks from
hackers. If a hacker manages to get into your system, there is no telling
what he can do. He can read your mails, look at your pictures, find your
bank details, of you have them on your PC, plant viruses and other evil
stuff, even completely erase your hard drive. There is a device, a piece of
software, that can prevent this. It is called a firewall. What it does is it
detects unauthorised attempts to enter your computer and warns you about
them, log the attempts, and tricks the attacker into believing that the
computer doesn't even exist. If a computer doesn't exist, then there is no
point in attacking it.
Luckily, one of the best firewall programs is FREE for private use. It is
PC on the 26th of April this year, I have had 16 failed attempts to hack
into the computer, and bear in mind, I am only online for a couple of
minutes at the time!
The program is extremely easy to install and setup. Just download it and
double click the executable. It installs itself and gets active next time
you boot up. If you are then going on line, a dialog pops up and asks
whether you wish the program to have access to the Internet. Clicking 'yes'
and 'remember this answer next time' makes the firewall allow Internet
access for the program in question, and it will never ask you again. There
are also possibilities to perform a manual setup of the program for those
who are so inclined.
I am fairly restrictive in my selection. Microsoft appear to have built-in
some functions that require Internet access, and I have banned those. I
don't trust Microsoft further than I can throw them, but now I feel fairly
safe. I think it is great fun to see the dialog pop up: "Zonealarm has
stopped an attempt to access your computer from...". I strongly recommend
everybody to download and install Zonealarm. It has been reviewed in one of
the big PC magazines over here and got as many points as the best firewalls
that you have to pay for. Trust me, it is time well spent!
Please spread the word, not only within the channel, but also between
channels. IRC is an activity that means extremely long online periods, and
staying online for a long time means that your computer is exposed for a
long time.
Greetings to all,
Bengt AKA Swegan
