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McAfee Personal
Firewall Plus
Isn't it sad that
we have to do so much now to protect our computers from those who have
absolutely no respect for your privacy? A whole industry sprung up
around it as a direct result of this and we have a bevy of products out
there that fill different needs depending on the creep that you are
trying to keep out of your computer.
Firewalls are the most common form of looking after your PC. What is a
firewall? Well to put it really simply a firewall controls the flow of
information in and out of your computer. Information leaves and enters
through "ports" on your computer which to give it a commonplace analogy
would be to compare it to a salt shaker. Salt leaves the shaker through
the holes on the top of the shaker and if you are really keen, you can
make it enter the shaker through the same holes, you get my drift? You
do? Good. Now imagine a firewall to be putty that you can place over any
hole you wish, blocking the flow of salt through the shaker. That's what
a firewall is in a nutshell; a blocker that can prevent information
getting in or out of any port (or hole) in our computer (shaker).
Personal Firewall Plus is a good solid piece of kit that is updated
regularly and for the most part didn't cause me too much trouble. I
noticed that Personal Firewall worked really well with the anti virus
software also by McAfee that is also covered in this series of reviews.
I would have to say that if are going to use this product then you
really should have both types of software for this to be of any benefit
to you. The program is very easy to install and has a very intuitive
interface that any computer user will be able to understand which is a
good thing as firewall and antisoftware are the two first things you
should install after the operating system.
The best advice I can give with this software is to make sure that you
stay on top on your updates as they are what makes sure that your
firewall has all the juice it needs to help keep the nasties out. Also
as with anything put out by a big company like McAfee, the bad guys out
there are going to be throwing as much as they can against the software
trying to break it. At the same time, the company puts out updates to
help protect you against these idiots. This is a good program, it has
it's flaws in that I don't think it's updated as fast as it could be but
it's certainly a solid piece of kit without some of the overriding
system integration that putting all that they can against the programs. |
