So  the previous firewall note had to do with the office Internet gateway firewall.  This one's about my PC.

I started running a firewall on my laptop about a year ago.  Between the office and home and various hotels and the like, my PC's exposed more than I like to the Bad Guys.  XP has a default firewall which operates at kindergarten level, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick but not quite robust enough for my paranoia.  So I installed Comodo Personal Firewall.  It's done a good job for me since then, and I recommend it to anyone who wants a personal firewall.

I mentioned this to one of our Security guys at a meeting a few months back, and he mentioned that we actually license (and, upon request, recommend) Symantec Client Firewall, to go with our corporate Anti-Virus standard (as part of the Symantec Client Security package).

So I just got that done today.  It seems a bit more fiddly than Comodo, though it does have the capability of recognizing different locations (and so allowing different rules).  But I've found one thing that makes me seriously love it:

It can block the ads in Yahoo Instant Messenger. 

Huzzah.  That's worth the inconvenience right there.

I'm sure I'll find things about it to hate or at least be annoyed by, but that one feature is soooooo nice.

Filed under :: My Computer :: Spam :: Virii
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Well, damn, damn, damn. Stupid, stupid Symantec Firewall (and Norton Firewall, too, evidently).

Okay, it acts a lot like AdBlock in Firefox, which is cool, plus it works with IE and with the annoying manner ad at the bottom of the YIM window. So far, so good.

But while it has a long string of strings you can configure it to block (or let pass), it *also* automatically blocks (when Ad Blocking is turned on) certain dimension image files.

Yup. Have an 88x31 GIF on your page? Won't see it, no matter what you've told it to let through. Other standard graphic dimensions are also shunted off into the ether.

This is a known "issue" and has been (based on some Googling) for some years. And it's so unspeakably stupid, I can't stand it. So that feature's turned off for now. Dammit.

I note that, like my previous firewall, it causes me grief when COH updates the program and then fires off the updated program. I need to remember to exit then reenter.