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I have been fixing and securing computers and computer networks since 1992. In my opinion, the best combination of software for virus protection and firewall is Avast Personal Edition (www.avast.com) (FREE) and Zone Alarm Personal Edition (www.zonelabs.com) (FREE). Here's why:

Zone Alarm, unlike any of the personal firewalls except for Norton, will not only block incoming requests, but also unauthorized outgoing requests. These unauthorized outgoing requests are often spyware browser hijacks or trojan horses trying to give control of your computer to another user on the internet.

The other is that it does adaptive stealthing of port 145. This allows it to remain "stealthed" while allowing you to have functionality for port 145 (IDENT) for local networking and IRC services.

Go to www.grc.com and look up "Shields Up", to see how good your firewall is. Then, try Zone Alarm, and test it. You will find that everything is in "Stealth Mode". This means when a hacker comes across your IP address, he sees... empty space. It's like a perfect Romulan Cloaking Device. No residual antiprotons or tachyon emissions. So let me cap:

1) It's Free.
2) Outgoing Firewall for trojans and spyware hijacks.
3) Adaptive Stealth of port 145.
4) It's Free.

Now, I recommend Avast for virus protection for several important reasons:

1) It's resident scanner is superb. If you have problems with your MP3 player, you prolly set the sensitivity to "High" instead of "Standard". That's because it is scanning each of your MP3 files before they play. That's security.
2) Boot Time Scanner. This is CRITICAL. NO OTHER PROGRAM HAS THIS. When I fixed computers before XP, I would boot from a dos disk, load F-PROT from www.f-secure.com, and check for viruses UNDERNEATH windows. See, many viruses will rape virus protection programs. However, with Avast, you have a Boot Level scanner, which will scan for viruses before any non Safe Mode programs load. Thus, you get a clean, uninterrupted scan. You can even do boot time file deletion, for those stubborn virus files that refuse to be deleted.
3) IT'S FREE.

So, these products (a) have features that the competition doesn't, (b) don't have vulnerabilities that the competition does, and (c) is free, as opposed to expensive.

But, I've only been doing this for 15 years. No need to trust me at my word. Try it out yourself.

Learn more about this author, Mark Collins.
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