The FINAL Solution

With the exception of online ordering and Email Virus/Trojans, there is one way, which can stop just about anyone gaining access to your system. It's known as a firewall and gives you DIRECT control over every single piece of Internet activity that goes on while you're live. You can allow transfers such as WWW and block others such as NetBIOS.

The best solution comes from http://www.Signal9.com, a piece of software known as 'Conceal FireWall'. Note that S9 was recently taken over by http://www.mcaffe.com , the site will re-direct you to their version of the firewall (same but with a new interface/name). Another problem is you will require active and detailed knowledge of networking ports and transmission types, something very few know everything about.

The good news is that a group calling themselves 'Zone Labs' have recently introduced a user-friendly firewall that doesn't require such knowledge. Called 'ZoneAlarm' it is extremely adept at detecting malicious use, yet still requires some basic training (explained below). You can find it here > http://www.zonelabs.com/ and we suggest you get it NOW if you participate in ANY kind of online discussion/chat.

In order to train this or for that matter, any firewall, we suggest you follow a set routine. Always launch the firewall AFTER connected to the Internet, despite what people say we've found certain problems associated with connecting while a firewall is active, although it's no huge worry. Then simply load some basic apps and see how the system responds to them, some may need to be cleared for use before you can use them.

Do the above for all your main programs and if you're really keen then ask somebody to try and hack you so that a particular style of data can be blocked. Now if you were to run that 'security test' again (above - can also be used to train a firewall), you would find that almost everything comes up as being in 'STEALTH' mode, which is exactly what you need (Hidden but working).

A final word

We hope the details and information given here can help you better protect your system, but remember that you can NEVER be totally secure. There'll always be someone trying to gain access to your system, some will even go as far as to scan entire ISP IP ranges in order to find vulnerable users. The act of scanning in itself is not illegal, but the act of hacking is.

A clever hacker will bounce his IP so you can't get the correct details, the good news is that only a tiny portion are clever enough to know how to do that. Thanks to the new tracking systems in the UK, anybody who can't mask their IP can be traced back to the original terminal, it takes time but it's perfectly possible as of early this year.

Note: There is currently a government battle over whether these monitoring systems can be expanded to collect more data on us ALL and not just specific people (hackers/known felons), so far it's not looking likely to happen, good news too.

<<[Main Page]