Set up a software firewall on your computer
Introduction

Surfing the internet these days without a firewall is as foolish as driving without wearing a seatbelt. But whereas wearing a seatbelt is required by law, the only law that dictates that you should use a firewall is common sense.

So, using a firewall is a must, but why ? The simple truth is that if you're connected to the internet then someone wants to connect to you. The reasons for this are varied but all are for less than honest means. They may want to install a Trojan program on your machine so that it can be controlled remotely, they may want to dump pirated software on your hard-disk for others to download, perhaps they want access to your private data to relieve you of your identity to commit credit card fraud. Or they simply want to use your PC as a zombie in order to send out huge quantities of spam email.

Broadband users are the most at risk simply because those machines are connected to the internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But dial-up users shouldn’t feel smug – they are as much at risk.  The simple message is: secure your PC using a firewall.

In this tutorial we’ll run through the process of installing and setting up the award-winning free ZoneAlarm firewall from ZoneLabs.com.  To get started click on 'Downloading ZoneAlarm' in the page navigation to the left.