The Firewall: Your First Line of PC Defense
The Duo discuss Internet threats and the merits of your friend the firewall.
The Duo are as horrified as you are by the onslaught of worms, viruses and other nastiness--Angela uses the term "malware"--that's infecting the Net. (Yes, the entire Net. Even folks who deal with this stuff for a living aren't immune; in fact, Steve says he managed to infect the entire staff of the show thanks to one virus-laden e-mail.)
The Duo have a special helping of fury, however, for that plague known as "spyware." Angela calls it not just insidious but invasive--out to plaster your screen with pop-ups and other garbage, and even capable of stealing information from your machine.
Unfortunately, Steve and Angela aren't the only people dealing with this nonsense. Fortunately, there are excellent ways of protecting yourself against the bad guys. The Duo unite in praise of the most effective first line of online defense: a good firewall.
Hardware firewalls are a fine thing, but software firewalls are easy for even inexperienced users to locate and install--and unlike their more muscular hardware cousins, you can get some good ones free. In fact, both WinXP and Mac OS X include firewalls, but--surprise!--the Windows version has a few problems. Pre-Service Pack 2 (SP2) versions of XP don't automatically switch the firewall on, so you'll have to do that yourself.
Worse, that XP firewall only protects you from stuff attempting to get into your computer, and not stuff already in your computer trying to weasel its way out. Steve and Angela both like a program called ZoneAlarm, which has a version free for the downloading. None of these programs are perfect--they often ask users to make decisions on matters they may not fully understand--but on the whole it's far better to risk getting a firewall setting wrong than to have no firewall at all.
