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I have my windows firewall turned off, bad idea? |
The windows firewall is utterly pathetic, it offers little to no security advantage and is a complete joke.
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I am running Nod 32 to do scans of everything coming in and out of my PC |
nod32 is okay, but nothing i'd recommend.
The best firewall you can get is a hardware one, in your router, as far as viruses go:
1) don't use internet explorer, this will eliminate almost completely the risk from getting malicious code if you use mozilla firefox. That isn't an understatement.
2) be careful with blind downloads, get verified links over those found in blind searches
3) Don't accept random .exes, .zips, etc. people send to you
4) Don't use outlook to check your mail, use a better application like The Bat!, Eudora, or even better Thunderbird (or thunderbird portable). These will minimise any risk of viruses from email attachments
5) On a similar note, don't ever open unexpected attachments.
You probably won't even need a virus scanner if you use your noggin
You'll probably get some tracking cookies, etc. but these are just related to brower adds. Run Adaware and spybot: search and destroy every month or so to clean those out.
Switch to mozilla and get adblock plus extension. Also switch to thunderbird portable.
I use AVG for 'active' protection, its not the best but its got a tiny memory footprint. I've never had the need to run a system scan, or rather when it has, Its never found anything beyond a cookie or a legitimate program.
You might want to try peerguardian2 with some ip block ranges. i wouldn't run it on port 80, but for emule, etc. its worthwhile I guess.