McAfee Firewall Question

I am presently using McAfee firewall and was wondering what everybody's opinion was of it. I have tried testing it using Leak Test and it tells me that my firewall has been penetrated. Any opinions or ideas on other firewall testers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.......Murph

 

Murph, I've never tried it, but I do know that Zone Alarm (free) and Zone Alarm Pro (paid for, but very reasonable) don't fail these (and other) tests.

You might want to try their evaluation versions.  And those of other vendors (just to show a little impartiality on my part!).

 

Check...If I were to try Zone Alarm should I first uninstall McAfee?  Thanks for the quick response.

 

Actually, Murph, I'd just try disabling the McAfee firewall, you know, taking it out of start-up (if it's there), making sure no elements of it are still running after a re-start before attempting to install ZA.

You might want to do a resources check for both McAfee and ZA, also, before making a final choice.

With neither of them starting automatically, do a cold start of your computer and check what ResourceMeter is telling you. Write it down,  put one or the other in start-up,do a complete shutdown/re-start, then check ResourceMeter again (write it down).

Then remove whichever one you tried from start-up, re-start and put the other one in start-up and check it again.

(If you have something like TaskInfo or ProcessExplorer, you might also want to check CPU usage by both programs at the same time). Pete

 

What version of Mcafee Firewall have you been using.  When you ran Leak Test did it (Mcafee) inform you that an application was attempting to access the internet?  Did you then allow Leaktest to access the Net?  Or did Leaktest just bypass the firewall in the first place?

I use McAfee version 3 .02 firewall and it always stops Leak Test, FireHole and passes GRC checks.  I keep it fully updated.  Even when I had the previous version of McAfee (version 2.15) it still stopped Leaktest.  I have never used the Clinic version of Mcafee firewall, so I can't comment on that.

I have used Zone Alarm 2.6.362 (free version) and was happy with that.   It also stopped Leaktest, Firehole and passed GRC.  I preferred McAfee.    I have not tried the latest version of the free Zone Alarm.

For any firewall to work it must be configured properly and kept updated.

 

Steve Gibson of GRC is doing a good job with his website, but i think that it is just a place to test very QUICK your firewall.

It says nothing about the reliability of your firewall, you get just a first very SMALL impression about your firewall.

By the way: Steve is saying the same as me, just read on his website what he is telling us about the tests on his site...

Ciao, Dave