Have you had your machine compromised

With all this searching for a better firewall, how many people have been let down by their original freeware f/w and had to go some better pay f/w? Or is it that you feel more secure with a pay one.

 

I've never had a free or pay firewall fail me. My first firewall was Tiny 2.xx and if it ran on this XP sp2 computer, I'd still be using it. I loved that firewall and in the couple of years I had that computer, I never had the urge to try any other firewall.

I've used ZA from 3.xxx to 6 (all briefly), Sygate for a year, several versions of Kerio from 2.1.4 to 4.2, Netveda, McAfee, Filesclab for a few days, Jetico for barely a day, LooknStop for a while, and others. I currently run kerio 4.2 but will occasionally remove it and run LnS again or some other new firewall. None of them have ever failed me. My machine is clean.

I did have one interesting thing on a brand new computer I purchased a couple of years ago -- not firewall related. I bought the computer, got it home, unpacked and installed it and immediately installed Spybot, updated the Spybot and ran it.

Spybot found iambigbrother on my brand new never before used machine. The program, iambigbrother, was also checked and verified to be real, not a false reading. That on a brand new computer (Gateway, if anyone cares to know) and this happened 3 yrs ago. I contacted Gateway and they were as amazed as me. That computer had never been online. I loaded Spybot from a CD and I'm fairly certain Spybot didn't have the iambigbrother program hiding in it.

I guess what I'm saying is that, based on the incident above, can you even trust a new in the box computer to be free of nasty things? I built the machine I'm now using, with lots of help. I installed the software, not some stranger. That, I guess is the only way to be sure you're safe -- if your software is safe, that is.

 

Chuck, I've heard of these incidents happening before. Someone buys a brand new machine, installs it, and finds it full of Spyware!

The usual cause of this is they buy at a supplier who has simply reboxed a returned computer (having cleared out any personal data) and then fobbed it off onto another consumer!

To answer the original question, no I've never had a FW fail, though the only free one I've ever used is the XP one (and that only briefly); mind you I always check that I'm fully stealthed.

I regard a FW as the single most important security measure - you can live without an AV (if you know what you are doing) but you cannot do without a FW. However you don't actually NEED all the extras you get with a paid for FW.

A lot of people find the simplicity of the XP FW to their liking, those sort of people would probably benefit from the new free Ghost Security FW - if they ever find out about it! - because of its outbound protection. But who knows, maybe the next Windows FW will have that as well.

Personally I'm happy to pay for ZAP and enjoy all the extras, but that is my choice.

 

I have never actually been let down or compromised in any way by my firewall, free or otherwise. I don't feel that one needs to pay to get a good firewall either. There are many free ones that do a fine job. I have tried most of them and find that the biggest problem is finding the one with the least bugs and/or problems. I can only think of one which seemed clean in this regard, and that is CHX. However, they all do different jobs, and for me, the trick is to find the one that does what I need with the least bugs and problems.. But the free ones often are the best in my opinion..

 

The replies are interesting.

The reason for asking is that there are lot of opinions here about how good certain pay f/w's are and you think maybe I should invest in one, then taking a step back I think that in the years since it has been necessary to have one I have not knowingly had any problem. So it follows on, why waste cash on something when the free ones do a sufficient job.

 

The pay ones usually have more features and abilities. For example The latest ZoneAlarm Pro has the triple firewall feature and the free version does not.

 

I have used quite a few firewalls, a combination of free and pay and have never had one let me down.

 

Same here errr...i think