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Shields up Scotty!
If you were the Captain of the Enterprise, you would right about now be telling Scotty to get those Shields up at full strength NOW! But you are not Captain Kirk and unfortunately Scotty is not at your beck and call. Nevertheless, we have found ourselves in some very hostile territory. What to do? Well the equivalent of shields on your computer is your firewall. I know many of you have had more questions on firewalls than you ever thought possible but I wanted to give you that analogy so you can picture your firewall going to work for you and in effect shielding you from the bad guys trying to get in. A firewall serves a vital part of your defensive effort, which is why I have been devoting so time to it.
A firewall does not replace your antivirus or your antispyware. It is an additional layer of defense and you use only one firewall. They don't work well together and in truth you only need one. If you already run ZoneAlarm for instance, you are fine and do not change a thing. Here's a very important role that a firewall can play and is sometimes mentioned. Unlike the Windows Firewall and Linksys routers, a good Personal Firewall also looks carefully at the sensitive information data leaving your computer and blocks it, so that stuff like your credit card numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, and social security number do not get stolen by hackers.
Hope this helps,
Take care,
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