Anti Virus & Firewalls

Flanker · 29 December 2002, 01:13

I run Norton Anti Virus software on my computer, I am due to renew my subscription shortly and have been offered an online renewal at 40% off, there is also an upgrade available for another $10 that includes the Norton Firewall. I would be interested to know what Anti Virus others use and what they recommend, and also is the Firewall any good or a hinderance.

Cheers,

Pete

Brian · 29 December 2002, 10:20

Pete
Were you having trouble sleeping last night?

Flanker · 29 December 2002, 11:30

Brian,

The Virus was keeping me up

Pete

Richard B · 29 December 2002, 11:33

I guess that you use the "active update" feature of Norton Antivirus which I've heard is quite good.

The last I heard about Norton's Personal Firewall it was rated as pants, but may have changed. Have a look at Steve Gibson's site (yes, I know he's a bit of a controvertial fellow) - www.grc.com it tells you everything you need to know about personal firewalls (but were too afraid to ask). Also rates different firewalls - http://grc.com/lt/scoreboard.htm

Alternatively pop down to WH Smith and purchase a copy of PC Pro - great for choosing new hardware/software as they do all the testing for you, and maintain an "A-list" of best-of-class products.

Flanker · 29 December 2002, 12:05

Thanks Pepper,

Norton Firewall seems to get a decent write up. I looked at the price of the upgrades see link below. What is funny is that if you decide not to buy after selecting one of the products, the system then offers you another 10% off to tempt you to buy it.

http://www.symantecstore.com/dr/v2/e...CACHE_ID=66665

Pete

Richard B · 29 December 2002, 12:55

Ah, you'll get some sleep now

Pete7 · 29 December 2002, 19:17

OMG Pepper, you shouldn't have posted the WWW.grc.com site,
Pete will be up all night now worried about 13 year old kids attacking his computer.

On a more serious note, any idea how effective the free Zone Alarm firewall is?

Pete

Garygee · 29 December 2002, 19:20

Have a look at one called zone alarm.

Think this is rated as quite good and used to be free but think there is a fee for use now.

The best option isto use a hardware firewall with NAT but thats about £300 ish as opposed to the software firewalls.

Regards Gary

DJL · 29 December 2002, 19:28

Zone Alarm is supposed to be fairly good. It’s definitely better than running nothing at all. But remember it's just as important to keep your operating system up-to-date with security patches.

Does anybody know how good Draytek routers (Vigor 2600) are?

This thread should probably have been started in the 'Other Stuff' forum.

Pete7 · 29 December 2002, 20:11

Steve Gibbsons leak test goes straight through Zone Alarm which is a little worrying, might need the Pro software instead of the free one.

For those who have read his article on the DDOS attack surely the command

<netstat -a> gives all the information required. Yes advice pls?

Pete

Flanker · 29 December 2002, 21:29

Blimey, the more I look into this the more scary it can look. After my little scare with the bear virus e-mail, I thought I had better review my system. I have had loads of e-mails and files from other Ribnet members, I just think that it is important that everyone is aware of what is out there, I would not want to infect anyones PC by sending a virus I had received. I put this thread on here as this is the read area and at least people can review thier own system. All help offered by those Ribnet members more able in this field would be appreciated by less able people such as me and others who are not so PC literate.

Thanks for the offerings so far.

Pete

crazyhorse · 29 December 2002, 21:38

Im running windows 98 and I have Picolow software for pictures.

I want to copy and send a picture to Rib.net and when I save it to my desktop ,it saves it as a word doc.When I try and Transfer it to a live Ribnet post it turnes into a picture and the post vanishes.What am I doing wrong and is my windows desktop set up wrong?any help would be appreciated.It seems I cant send a picture,Im sure this isnt correct and Im no pc whizz.

Thanks Crazyhorse

Ribald · 29 December 2002, 21:38

According to "ShieldsUp" my computor (running Norton Internet Security) is un-healthly secure - in fact it almost implies the thing does not exist at all

Pete

I have just renewed my subscription for £24.95 - quite painless.

Flanker · 29 December 2002, 21:43

ribald,

Did you go for the Firewall, and what is one of those anyway? I have an idea that it prevents things coming in to the computer but what is the difference between that and the normal virus stuff. I have also seen comments on here about bl..dy firewalls, what was all that about, does it cause problems?

Pete

Pete7 · 30 December 2002, 17:37

Pete have a look at this:

www.zonelabs.com

Work your way through the site and avoid buying the pro version. You will eventually end up at the free version, just down load it and install. Then click through the options and choose the highest security settings for everthing.

It will throw up warning messages that your pc is being probed about one a hour. Most are quite normal where your pc and the routers (like "telephone exchanges") are talking to each other to see if there is anyone there I think, but some may not be. I have a French server probing my pc at the moment. Their IP address doesn't give the name of the web site which is a little worrying, like what are they hidding ?

Pete
(With Shields Up and flak jacket on)

Manos · 30 December 2002, 17:49

Zonelabs is the best. Better even when you get the paltinum version.

Alex Brown · 30 December 2002, 21:06

To be perfectly honest, if you're running any of the windows variants, provided they are all kept fully upto date with security patches, the system should pretty much be fine...... also, if you have things like IIS removed after install, and then make sure your dial up connection does not connect anything other than basic tcp, which means no file/print sharing, or client for microsoft networks ticks on then again mostly it should be fine.

Although I am currently sat behind an ISDN router which uses Network Address Translation (NAT), before having this, I never once used any firewalling products, since they became a nuisance, blocking ports here there and everywhere

What I do believe in strongly now is Symantec Norton Antivirus, provided it's kept fully upto date, this is a very very handy bit of software to be had, especially the 2002 version onwards, which includes scanning of outgoing e-mail (SMTP) as well as incoming (POP3).

-Alex (virus free for now...)