Firewall Questions

well i was wondering out of all the highest quality firewalls which takes the least amount of reosurces and is most reliable

can most firewalls protect against scams, hijack attempts, and which?

E.g
say if someone was to use internet banking, or bidding on sites(auctions) which would be the best firewall to use.

Which firewall would u recomend, i have Win98 so a firewall that is reliable on that OS would be good (please not ZoneAlarm as when i had that before i used to get invalid page faults by a program called "Vsmon" (something like that) when i would exit zonealarm or shut down the PC)

 

"Highest quality", "least amount of resources", and "most reliable" is something of the Holy Grail of firewalls (and similarly unobtainable). For example, I would tend to equate 'highest quality' with features that are not present in all firewalls. Well, the only way you get that is by using more resources. Of course, this tends to mean that these applications are typically far more complex and keeping up reliability at the same time is truly a lot of fun.

No (to put it bluntly). You haven't defined these terms, but to me what you're talking about here relies upon social engineering. Some bad guy gets you to authorize downloading some malware (or contacting some disreputable website) and at that point you're toast (to put it politely). This is not a firewall function and any firewall that advertises that it will protect you from doing stupid things is probably lying to you. (Sometimes, it helps to read the fine print -- at which point you find out that what you are looking for and what they are offering are somewhat different feature sets. Social Engineering is the current fancy name for falling prey to a con artist (as we say here in the States). No firewall is going to protect you from being gullible (and this crap doesn't come with a big flashing sign on it that says "Scam! SCAM!!")

Well, the problem here is that I'm not sure that you fully understand what a firewall does and what it doesn't do in the manner of protecting you (and often from yourself).

I think you're going to need to do some familiarization -- either with the various free software firewalls or one of the 30-day trials for the 'payware' software firewalls.

And my primary point is the flashy interface is irrelevant; do you understand (really understand) what the product is doing?

 

Nicely stated Joe. The Holy Grail for computer security just does not exist. An no combination of security programs will provide such a holy grail. If only the public would understand this they may be alot better off plus stop wasting their money on useless un-needed programs that promise them heaven and just give them hell.
Scammers, hackers, rely on the weakness of people an not on the weakness of their computer security...with exceptions of course.
Spend $2,000 for a new computer an before its taken out of the box its already loaded with spywear. An the average consumer has no idea.
Firewalls come in all flavors, and sizes but none will offer protection to those not willing to educate themselfs on proper useage of the firewall as well as the internet.
Can't help but laugh when some website offers to test your security BUT YOU MUST DIS-ABLE YOUR FIREWALL FIRST> an people do!
This is not in response to the topic poster. Its just good sense to educate oneself

 

thank you very much for that information joe

 

Suleman1uk:

Nothwithstanding what Joseph V. Morris and ShotgunGirl had to say (education IS everything!), I am running the free version of ZoneAlarm on a Win98SE system and have never had a problem, let alone one with 'vsmon'. I suspect that you have some configuration error, and I would try contacting ZoneLabs regarding this.

 

i did no reply, tried contacting them with 4 seperate e-mails no reply, why