firewall

I think Comodo Personal Firewall 2.0 brings excitement back to the free-firewall category with a spiffy interface and impressive performance. It protects any Windows 2000 or XP SP2 system from hack attacks, and it blocks unauthorized programs from using the Internet—even programs whose malware-style trickery fooled the other free firewalls. Comodo Personal Firewall 2.0 installs inside the Comodo Launch Pad, a control center that pulls together various free and free-trial products from Comodo. Among the free offerings are Comodo Antispam (a challenge/response-based spam blocker), Comodo BackUp (a traditional file-based backup utility), and VerificationEngine (an antiphishing browser add-in). You may want to give these a whirl; to date, I've tested only the firewall. As soon as I started installing Comodo Personal Firewall, it noted the presence of an existing firewall (the ZoneAlarm free edition) and asked me to remove it. That's smart, because two firewalls running at once are liable to get into a fight. A free code obtained from Comodo's Web site activated my installation for a lifetime subscription. The Windows XP SP2 Security Center recognized Comodo Personal Firewall as my system's new firewall protection and started tracking its status. Comodo successfully put my test-bed system's ports into stealth mode. They weren't just closed to hackers' manipulation; they were completely invisible from outside. I confirmed this with the ShieldsUP! test from Gibson Research (www.grc.com) and several other Web-based port scan tests. Of course, all the other free firewalls do this too, even the built-in Windows Firewall. Like any new personal firewall installation, Comodo initially bombarded me with pop-up warnings about programs accessing the Internet. It even warned about some of its own modules! In general, however, its pop-ups are smarter than most. They identify over 7,000 known programs as safe (a feature found in the Pro version of ZoneAlarm but not in the free edition), and multiple related pop-ups are automatically combined. Rather than wait for Comodo to notice each application's first attempt at Internet access, I told it to scan the system for known applications and authorize them. That cut down the number of pop-ups dramatically—a nice feature. Happy mylotting all.... God bless you..^^....... [em]thumbup[/em]