DO I NEED A FIREWALL ?We have often talked to people that actually do not know what a Firewall is, and these are people that use the internet everyday! It’s extremely important that everybody who uses the Internet installs some sort of Firewall.
A firewall is a Computer Program that prevents Hackers Gaining access to your Computer. When you log onto the Internet your Computer is given a numeric address known as an IP address that identifies its location, this is similar to your house address. If you want to send a letter to someone then you write a letter to the address of the house, but also if you want to steal something from that house you know where they live!
An IP address is the same, whenever you access a Website, or send a message the remote Computer identifies you by looking at your IP address, which works great. But equally these IP addresses locate your Computer, so a Hacker can hack into any open port on your Computer and gain access to your Personal Files.
In the Past with dial up Internet, every time you connected to the Internet you were given a new IP address and the Internet was so slow that Hackers did not have much time to do anything. So Hacking with dial up Internet was less of an issue. Now almost everybody who uses the Internet on a regular basis uses a Broadband connection, and this High Speed Internet normally has a Fixed IP address.
The IP address of your Broadband Internet may not change for a month, a year, or ever! So once a Hacker has found a week point in your Computer they can continue to abuse it. Many people ask us if they need a Firewall, We are sure you can guess what our answer is, - Yes of course you do need a Firewall!
Your Computer connects to the Internet with a series of Ports. Think of it like the Physical Ports on the back of your computer, you have different Ports on your Computer to connect different devices to, different Ports are for different things, and you can Disable some Ports if they are causing problems.
The Internet connection is split similarly like this, there are hundreds of different Ports all for different things, and the uses of some can be restricted if required. For example port 80 is for viewing WebPages, and port 21 is for FTP. Some Ports are open, and some Ports are closed. If the Port is left open then a Hacker could gain access to your Computer.
A Firewall makes it possible to only allow certain Programs access to certain Ports, for example you can have a Firewall, which only allows access on port 21 to your FTP Client Program, if any other Program tries to connect on this port it will notified by the Firewall.
So a Firewall protects against incoming and outgoing Traffic to make your Computer Secure. If a Program that the Firewall has not set a rule for, tries to access your computer through the Internet your Firewall will tell you, and ask you if you want the program to have access to your computer.
Microsoft realised that Computer Security was becoming more of an issue, because in the Service Pack 2 of Windows XP (SP2) they included a Firewall and Security Centre. So do you still need a Firewall if you have the XP Firewall installed ? Well the answer is Yes and No, the XP Firewall is not the best it’s very limited in its functionality.
There are some Conspiracy Theories that Microsoft did not make their Firewall brilliant, so that people still had to purchase additional Software from other companies. The XP Firewall is the absolute bare minimum that you should be using to access the Internet.
To summarize the main reasons why you should have a Firewall are:
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