Vista - Vista Home Premium

I just bought a Toshbia A305 S6825 notebook with Vista Premium sp1 (which I
was told had good security programs installed) and someone told me yesterday
that the Firewall on Virsta Premium is not (very) effective. They suggested I
should use the (new) ZA (which is about 45MB, so they say). They mentioned
that they used "ShieldsUP" to test Vista Premium's Firewall and found a
"ping" (don't know what that is!) got through.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions about the Vista Home Premium's
Firewall? Or is this just too "hi tech" for me to get worried about now since
I just bought the new Toshiba with Vista Home Premium sp1 and since I am a
novice at all of this? I am trying to learn so much, as soon as possible,
which is a bit confusing and daunting

I am using Vista Ultimate and only use the Windows Vista Firewall however,
my broadband connection does work through a modem/router (the router
effectively being a hardware firewall rather than software). The 'ping' you
refer to from ShieldUp simply means that the ShieldsUp program managed to
get through the firewall and register your IP address.

While I use Vista's firewall I have also always been an advocate of Zone
Alarm (the free version). If you feel worried or threatened by what you read
regarding firewalls and want to make the change, the by all means download
Zone Alarm (free version) I would certainly recommend it.


--
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John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Desktop Experience

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
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"AliceZ" <AliceZ@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1A96E465-10D8-4A3B-80D0-05FA04A2A2A2@xxxxxx

There is nothing wrong with Vista's built-in firewall.
However, for maximum protection, consider installing
a comprehensive anti-virus/security program, such as
Windows OneCare. You can try it FREE for 90 days.
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

"AliceZ" wrote:

I just bought a Toshbia A305 S6825 notebook with Vista Premium sp1 (which I
was told had good security programs installed) and someone told me yesterday
that the Firewall on Virsta Premium is not (very) effective. They suggested I
should use the (new) ZA (which is about 45MB, so they say). They mentioned
that they used "ShieldsUP" to test Vista Premium's Firewall and found a
"ping" (don't know what that is!) got through.

Does anyone have any thoughts/suggestions about the Vista Home Premium's
Firewall? Or is this just too "hi tech" for me to get worried about now since
I just bought the new Toshiba with Vista Home Premium sp1 and since I am a
novice at all of this? I am trying to learn so much, as soon as possible,
which is a bit confusing and daunting

Just wanted to mention that I tried the Shields Up not only on the Toshiba
notebook with Vista Home Premium Sp1 (with also AVG-AV; AVG-AS, SpyBlaster),
but also on our WinXPsp2 desktop which has NAV (AVG-AS; AdAware, SpyBlaster)
and that also showed the same "ping" thing.

"AliceZ" wrote:

Sorry - forgot to mention that I also use DSL.

"AliceZ" wrote:

Run the Symantec Security check:
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/d...d=ie&venid=sym

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

"AliceZ" <AliceZ@xxxxxx> wrote in message news:4231904C-5913-4A96-B836-5EC2B0EE0743@xxxxxx
Sorry - forgot to mention that I also use DSL.

"AliceZ" wrote:

"AliceZ" <AliceZ@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1A96E465-10D8-4A3B-80D0-05FA04A2A2A2@xxxxxxShieldsUP is written by Steve Gibson, whom some revere as a security genius,
and the rest of us think he's a plagiarising idiot who doesn't know what
he's talking about.

It has been a long time since 'ping' was anything remotely like a security
threat. I personally like keeping it in place, as it is used as a measure of
network connectivity.

The firewall in Windows Vista is sufficient for most purposes, and is
configurable. ZoneAlarm (what 'ZA' usually stands for) is something of a
fashion, and if you want a program that keeps asking "is it okay to let this
application communicate to the Internet?", and believe that you can
competently answer that question, then perhaps it's for you. However,
Windows Vista's firewall does a thoroughly competent job of preventing
traffic that you didn't invite.
Perhaps now is not the time to be adding a new program that is going to
assume you understand what you're doing?

Make sure you keep patched, keep your anti-virus and anti-spyware updated
(there are free anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, if you can't afford to
keep current on the short-term subscription to whatever came with your
system), and you should be ahead of most people.

The big additional feature most people will suggest ZoneAlarm for is that of
"outbound filtering". In an enterprise, this could be useful, in that it
allows you to prevent policy-breaking programs from communicating outside
the system - for a home user, it's "game over" already if you have an
unauthorised program installed on your system. [And in an enterprise, there
are better tools than ZoneAlarm available - an enterprise would not trust a
potentially-malicious machine to police itself]

Alun.
~~~~
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Texas Imperial Software | Web: http://www.wftpd.com/
23921 57th Ave SE | Blog: http://msmvps.com/alunj/
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I have Vista Home Premium and use Sphinx Vista Firewall Control, freeware version.

It works with Windows Firewall and you can control what goes out from your pc.

Done a ShieldsUp test and reports my pc is invisible ??

Running, the program uses 3500k of memory (not much) and installs on disk using 1.90mb

In 12 months, it seems i have been well protected. Whether its Vista Firewall Control, Windows Firewall or the combination of the 2 ?

cheers

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:35:02 -0700, AliceZ
<AliceZ@xxxxxx> wrote:
what security programs are those?
That's just the usual nonsense from clueless "outbound control"
junkies.
For what purpose? - For screwing up your network and making your
system possibly more vulnerable? Fine - go ahead.
Yes. Followers of Gibsons "stealthing" nonsense will often say
something like that. They are mostly clueless security wannabees. As
long as you're not exposing any open ports you should be fine.
Responding to pings is not to be considered a security risk unless you
believe in security theater.
It's good enough.
As a novice you should pay more attention to what you do, what sites
you visit and so on. Don't click on everything you see and don't
run/install/allow all kinds of crap from dubious sources.

And most important: Keep your system patched.

On Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:26:01 -0700, AliceZ
<AliceZ@xxxxxx> wrote:
This indicates that your DSL thing is also a router, and ShieldsUp is
actually testing this device and not your machine. Nonetheless no real
issue.