BlackIce and intrusions

Trying out BlackIce PC 3.6 cnz now, after trying Tiny 6.

When I was running Tiny 6, I had tiny (haha, bad pun) notifications of intrusions, maybe one an hour.

When I intalled Netpeeker (which has a firewall in-built) on top of Tiny 6, it's pop-up informed me that I had several intrusions - maybe five an hour.

Now with BlackIce installed, I get tons of intrusion notices - 20 to 30 an hour! The BlackIce icon is forever flashing. Yes, I know I can disable the flashing. But it seems like everyone is knocking on my door. It's like with BlackIce, suddenly I am on the map of the virtual world and it is saying to the virtual world, hit me with your best shot! Strangely, if I do a scan with Symantec, all my ports are stealthed with BlackIce and Tiny!

So was Tiny not notifying me of the intrusions (which is a possibility, but I am sure I enabled the necessary IDS rules), or is BlackIce the culprit.

Any BlackIcers here to explain this?

Thanks

 

OK, BlackIce was somehow leaving one of the ports it was listening to, open. Hence the numerous scans I was getting. So Steve Gibson of GRC was right. He's quite negative on BlackIce for this reason - why tell the world that you are online and invite scans.

Oh, and the 'eye' has stopped flashing out of control!

 

I personally would not rely on BlackIce as a stand-alone firewall. Tiny is awesome, but I only use its Windows Security features ATM. I have used BlackIce on multiple occasions and it picks up a large range of attacks including some e-mail worms and such, but I would not depend on it, just a personal opinion.

 

I to have used BlackIce, however I to ditched it soon after as it was not advanced enough for some of the things I wanted to do. It also didn't seem the most secure of firewalls. If you looking for some different firewalls to have a play with, you may awnt to try here.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads34.html

Jimbob

 

I use blackIce all the time. my Ports are stealthed. BlackIce is a Eye Opener it shows you how dangerous the internet really is. Yes you are being constantly Port scanned. There are sick people in this World that have nothing better to do but to bother and disrupt peoples computers. BlackIce alows you to see the attacks in real time. As far as blocking its great. This is Great Software people.
Im a paid subscriber and have had it for over 5 years and never had a problem.

 

I personally don't think I would pay for it. It didn't seem worth it personally. If I had the money to pay for a firewall, I could find one a lot better than BlackIce.

Jimbob

 

Coming after Tiny 6, BlackIce seems to be a bit short on the control (i.e. rules) side. Which is good if you don't want to continuously tweak your firewall. Their app control gui can improve, although those wanting a no-rules 8signs app with app control will be heartened.

Other than that, a big negative is that BlackIce can be difficult to install. It suddenly reboots on my AMD64. Guess for the same price, you can also get a ad-filter and other add-ins in Outpost.

The good part. Speed is improved, since there are not so many processes checking and counter-checking. Also, ports are stealthed in default. Not so with Tiny6, but probably because I was tweaking Tiny a fair bit.

I'll stick with BlackIce awhile until the trial ends.