So what's your opinion on Firewall's?

[Panda Man]

Originally Posted by Quakindude

I've read your guide and it's pretty good. You did nice work there.

Once I get any type of infection, I re-image my drive. I lose little, if any thing, from doing so due to regular backups.

It's been a habit of mine ever since the first days of broadband. By doing so, I *know* it's gone and to be quite honest, I can't trust a system that has been infected. I know you can repair it, delete the bad crap, so on and so forth, but I prefer a fresh image of my drive contents. It's a habit I got into back when viruses were coming out so often that the limited A/V software we had at the time couldn't detect "virus-like" activity.

Well, I guess that's the best way to do things. The only thing I would be worried about is if the virus was a time bomb and contaminated your backups

I'm not that worried about infections, I'v never had one spread from drive to drive (never heard of happening either, though I know its very well possible) so if something happens, I just move over my account to a different partition and format C:, then reinstall. Everything is split between 5 partitions, recovery is never a problem

[Archilochus]

Have you guys ever been to grc.com and run the Leak Test (Probe my Ports) and Shields Up? There are also some little exe's on the downloads page that are free... Check It Out!

Home of Gibson Research Corporation

Most Popular Freeware on GRC.COM

[screwballl]

I myself use AVG (or AntiVir), ZoneAlarm and the router NAT hardware firewall in the router (higher dollar SMC from 5 years ago or so). Windows firewall is ****. Most modern day routers that you buy for $30 or less, they are no better than Windows Firewall.
For protection from nasties, I use CCleaner, a-squared, Ad-Aware and Rootkit Revealer which are run once a week (or more if something seems problematic).

I have found that NOD32 is ok but is not good for the typical home user.

[Jafah5150]

I prefer to use both hardware and software firewalls on my personal PC's...mainly because my ISP is a fishing pond big time.
I have even gone so far as to setup a sacrificial box just for surfing. Just has the basics on it and only takes about an hour and change to redo if it gets compromised.

[screwballl]

I am actually thinking of setting up a smoothwall box from my 600MHz Celeron, and since it is linux based I can setup folding and get a few extra ppd (20-30)

[Quakindude]

I have the perfect circumstances to make myself a server box. Throw Bigdaddy Linux on it, Clark Connect or the like, and call it good. Maybe even run the F@H SMP client on it.

I need to do this soon. Need to do some research first. And get a cheapo case for the thing.

[Nasgul]

I got everything, hardware firewall, software firewall and a AV.

I also have WinPatrol (http://www.winpatrol.com/), just in case some software tries to install something that'd need to run in the background, and in some cases I have stopped certain programs from running in the background when they try to install whatever is it that they need.

[Hitman]

The question isn't whether or not your paranoid, but rather are you paranoid enough?

[Tyreal]

Originally Posted by Nasgul

I got everything, hardware firewall, software firewall and a AV.

I also have WinPatrol (http://www.winpatrol.com/), just in case some software tries to install something that'd need to run in the background, and in some cases I have stopped certain programs from running in the background when they try to install whatever is it that they need.

Good Lord. Thats an aweful lot of security. Is it really necessary?

[Blondie]

Right now I'm running Norton AV on mine with the hardware firewall. Normally I have NIS, and if I'm only running the AV run zone alarm.

I've been saying I'm going to reformat mine for over a year now, guess I should have put the NIS on it. Last Panda scan found lots of pr0n tracking cookies from someone using my computer while I was out Christmas shopping. I wasn't too happy to find these.

If I go to my daughters myspace page, Norton pops up with comet curser. I have to run a deep scan on her machine which will consist of going to both Panda & Housecall and possibly installing spyware software on hers. Just haven't been up to it.