Best outbound firewall for non-techie user?

Personally I had not run a firewall on my machine for a long time. I have the windows firewall, the firewall on my dsl router, and the firewall on my wireless gateway. I realize that leaves a risk of malware communicating out. I've been putting a site together for family members & friends to recommend the best free software.

I loaded Zone Alarm Free two weeks cause thats what I used way back in the day. I notice the free version prompts often. Now I work in the IT field so I can discern what to allow out and what not to, but I'd have to admit it can be confusing even to me. I can't recommend this to my mom, she would just get annoyed. I noticed they say in the non-free version they include a database of "known good programs" that cut way down on the prompts.

Is there a free version that includes this database or is pay-for the only option for less prompts with an outbound blocking firewall?

 

Put it on Automatic insted of Interactive and 99% of the alerts will go away why still protecting the computer quite well.

 

You can try Online Armor free, but IMO your family should be fine with just the Windows Firewall.

Just focus on preventing malware rather than trying to catch it connecting out

 

Yea outbound protection is more of a toy for power users I think.

 

Online Armor wins on usability these days and is getting better and better all the time...

 

Comodo Firewall Pro 3 without Defense+ is a good option too.

 

Unfortunately tho OA has more popups in automatic mode then ZA does in interactive mode. at least from what I have noticed tho. I did not use the software much.

I believe that's what he said he was trying to avoid.

 

What your mom needs is a FW designed for mom's. There is a long list of products that would not qualify but one you can use that can be zero prompts is Online Armor. The free version will not update itself, but that may not matter in her case.

OA is based on a "white list" of "trusted by OA programs" and goes through it's own learning mode. The user sets it up to autotrust and OA creates it's own rule based on what it finds on her system

What any user, IMO needs is tools based on their www risk profile, not if the product is free or not.

Another possibility is PC tools personal FW plus. But I haven'y used that for a while. Set up was easy.

Hope this helps.

 

thanks for all the input it looks to me that with a low risk profile third party firewall maybe overkill as long as there is good malware protection, just use the windows firewall.

I will checkout OA just to compare to Zone Alarm.
thanks again!

 

I used the both and the both were good to me. But recently I prefer OA just because I like it a bit more. There seems not to be any logic in my prefference, this is just comfortable feeling that made a choice.

 

I'll go with the recommendation of Online Armor.

I'm what you would call a 'mom' well I'm a 65 year old granny actually and I used to use Zone Alarm Pro but got fed up with the bloat at each upgrade so looked at OA, and I'm more than happy with it, I have the paid version, and like the way that any pop ups that I do get are actually understandable to me and give me a lot more information to be able to make a correct decision than ZA ever did.