I am now using cabel internet access and I was wondering what you suggest as by means of fireware, pop-up stoppers, and protection from porn. I have two children and I want to make the internet as safe as possible. Thanks ahead of time.

Best protection from porn?

Don't visit porn sites!

Simple but so effective... [img]smile.gif[/img]

But there is a program called NEtNanny or something, look for it on
http://www.tucows.com
I never tried it, but heard it is pretty good.

Yes, I realize don't go to porn, but even so that garbage still can be sent.

<span style="color: lightblue">There is a program about called 'mailwasher' and a similar one called 'webwasher' (although I have lost links to both of these) which will keep you free of junkmail and other things. For popups, the Google searchbar (available at the google website) claims to be good, although I haven't tried it. For a firewall, Zonealarm and Symantec firewalls are both said to be excellent, although they aren't cheap. You might also want to consider protection from Spyware if you haven't already - Ad-Aware is very good at this, and if you get one of the pay editions, you can have it running constantly like a virus autoprotector. Spybot SD is said to be good aswell.

I assume you mean firewall? Kerio Personal Firewall is great and also free for personal use. It allows you to tweak most everything. As for pop-up stopper I use Free Surfer MkII which is also free. Stops almost everything. Another way to stop pop-ups is to use a different browser than IE, I'd recommend Opera. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Since we are on the topic here, What does everyone think of the built in firewall that XP comes with? I am currently running that (XP Professional) along with a norton firewall. I was wondering if anyone liked those.. Or if they had a better suggestion.

<font color="cyan">Nortan Antivirus 2004 has a decent firewall and other very good utilities.</font>

WinXPs firewall will stop a script kiddy from getting into your system easily.

It won't keep him out long, it offers zero outbound protection, it has no logging, it is difficult to configure. Its not effective protection even on dialup.

I use the free version of zonealarm, which hasn't given me any problems.

I tried Kerio, but after the initial set up it simply wouldn't let me log into its admin features so I couldn't change any settings! I had to uninstall it! Anyone found this?
As far as pop-up stoppers: Both Mozilla and Opera browsers have built-in pop-up stoppers which work great (I've used both) and both browsers are far superior to IE - the only problem is that a lot of sites don't cater for other than IE users - if they all just stuck to the same standards! Bah! Anyway I mostly have no problems with Opera and the advanced features more than make up for the few occasions when I have to use IE to view a site properly.

I also use free version of ZoneAlarm - no problems but it's slightly basic - AFAIK you can't open and block ports individually - you can though allow specific IP addresses through which is useful for playing games by IP without turning off the firewall.

[ 11-20-2003, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]