[AccessD] OT: free Sygate personal

Lambert,
Good story!

Illustrates the reason for having an outgoing firewall perfectly. 

Unfortunately, Microsoft's built in firewall doesn't protect against
outgoing threats. So, unless you are abasolutely sure that you can't
possibly have any worries about malware then you are better off having a
firewall that can prevent incoming and outgoing traffic.

The Sygate Personal Firewall was great for home PCs, for which it was free.
You could purchase a license for it for your business PCs too and then,
IIRC, it was called "Pro" added a few items and the ability to get support.

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Heenan, Lambert

Curious. I would have said that the firewall *in a router* protects you from
port scanners and the like trying to get IN. But what it does nothing about
is protecting you from programs on your system that want to call home.

For instance I was looking for a freeware file splitter that could handle
multi-gigabyte files. One that I tried looked ok "on paper" until I tried
using it. Then my software firewall advised me that two spyware programs
came along with the package, one was intending to report home on every
website that I visited. Needless to say all three products were removed
(sorry I didn't keep a note of which they were).

Without a software firewall I would have been a victim of today's mallware
brigade.