SafeSurf & firewalls ( was RE: Symantec corporate AV & Firewall co-existence problems? )

John:

All of that is fine, but it seems outside of what I was thinking of as being 
related to 'firewall' for this thread. When I connect to the internet (from 
home through any of my ISPs), I don't have to do any kind of surfing at all to 
get into situations where a firewall is useful.

I don't have to do anything in terms of running a program to do internet work.

I can sit and watch my firewall logging rejection after rejection of external 
attempts to access my home network. Now, this is what your hardware firewall is 
doing as well, so it _doesn't_ apply exactly to you. This is purely a 
discussion for completeness. Hopefully, even if some attempt gets allowed 
through my firewall, my regular security updates of machines on my network will 
provide additional protection.

I prefer in-depth security. I have a software firewall active on every PC at 
home regardless of any firewalling done by my ISP (as if) and any 
router/firewall.

I made a one-time mistake a couple years ago of connecting a PC via dialup 
without a firewall. A Win2K upgrade destroyed some drivers and I had to install 
a modem card to get a connection. That allowed me to run Windows Update to get 
to a rational state where I could do the rest of what was needed (such as 
install ZoneAlarm).

Within minutes, I had been infected by a variation of... hmm... can't recall 
which virus, it was hitting all over for months back then. The point is that it 
had nothing to do with safe-surfing. I connected to EarthLink, then to 
Microsoft (and yes, I know how dumb _that_ sounds in a discussion of "safe 
surfing" and firewalls.) If I didn't have to use dialup, if I could've gotten 
Win2K to install what I needed before connecting, it probably would've gone 
much better.

I just wanted to be sure I was understanding when you connected the 'safe 
surfing' and 'no need for a firewall for my PC' concepts.

BTW, I also quit letting Flash and similar things install on my regular PCs. 
(And getting rid of them once I decided to quit was no picnic.) I do have a 
sacrifice-PC that has the basic ones installed.

Tom Liotta

pctech-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

My household is made up of adults.  Not that kids can't surf safely, but
we recognize the potential consequences of our actions.  Anyway, age
aside the crux is that we know better than to go to suspicious sites,
read spam & follow the links, download software from unknown sites
without some 3rd party recommendation/verification, etc.  I use Firefox,
don't load Flash, and block popups.  My wife uses IE but she rarely goes
to more than about a half dozen regular sites like Yahoo for email.  Our
OSes, web-related apps, and MS Office are kept current WRT security
updates.

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

Can you elaborate on your comment? "Safe surfing" stands on its own
merit, but I'm unclear on its significant relationship to a firewall in
this context. You do use a firewall; so, this is more academic. But it
feels like you had something specific to infer.

Thanks.

Tom Liotta

pctech-request@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

   2. Re: Symantec corporate AV & Firewall co-existence problems?
      (Jones, John (US))

Of all people, I guess I'm surprised that you don't have a firewall at

home.  Are you using a router firewall and not any software firewall?

Router firewall.  Because I practice relatively safe surfing, I'm not 
too worried about it.  Ditto for my wife for the most part.  We also 
have very little in the way of valuable data on our PCs; my browser 
cache is probably the most 'dangerous' thing there.