Greetings Viewers,

Today we would like to talk about a rather important topic.  Online Protection!  As we all know there are a great many bad things out there across the internet.  We also know that trust is a huge issue.  So, with all of that said, we the team at onlinefreeware.org would like to talk about Firewalls today.

The goal of an Internet Firewall is to block out the bad but still allow the good.  Simple object right?  Not really, matter of fact, it can get really confusing.  See the way the internet works is through communication.  Well in order for certain functions to communicate they use what is called ports.  These ports allow certain programs to travel freely in order to do their job.  Example: port 80 is mainly for Internet Viewing (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and of course many other internet browsers).  Well the bad people (hackers, scammers, spammers, and alike) usually know which ports do what tasks.  So they know which ports are open and which ports are normally closed.

Here is where the Firewall comes in.  The firewalls job is to block the bad people from getting into your computer.  But there is an important factor that gets overlooked.  Firewalls will NOT stop spyware, adware, viruses, and other bad files.  Firewalls only block traffic flow.  This though can cause issues later down the road.  There are a lot of firewalls out there that block everything until you tell it otherwise.  Then after a short period of time you start to get annoyed by the constant questioning, “Do you want to allow or deny X program from connecting to the internet?”

Luckily, Windows XP on up comes with a built in firewall.  It is a beginners level firewall but it is a firewall none the less.   As long as you have a good known Anti-Virus and Spyware Protection your base Windows Firewall will be enough.  But sometimes folks like to have more protection.  So the Team at onlinefreeware.org decided to find a free Firewall that was simple to use.  We found Outpost Firewall.  They also have nice screenshots here.

I know it seems like we talked a lot about Firewalls and yet we barely covered the topic.  So with this in mind, the more complex you make things the more problems you are going to have.  Keep it simple and easy, and with our help, FREE!

-Team OnlineFreeware.org