firewall question

passingthrough

i was told recently that i should use a firewall thing called comodo. is this an antivirus too or is it seperate? can i run avast and it at the same time, the person who told me said they were the best combination but to be honest im not 100% sure what he meant. can anyone shed any light on this

Odaise Gaelach

A firewall is used to allow some incoming and outgoing connections to your computer and block others. It allows certain trusted programs (such as your web browser) to access the network and Internet and blocks untrusted ones. It also stops unknown connections from the Internet to your computer.

Think of it as a security checkpoint. Things that you want to be able to pass messages in and out of it (like your web browser) will be let through the firewall. Others that are untrusted won't be allowed to pass through. And you can say what is trusted and what is untrusted.

A firewall isn't completely secure; malicious programs that you download through your web browser will bypass the firewall because it is a trusted program (the firewall assumes that you know what you are doing). Similarly, it doesn't guard against non-network attacks, such as infected USB sticks. This is what an antivirus is for. It protects against and removes malicious software on your computer.


Comodo has some anti-virus software but you can download the firewall seperately and run it alongside Avast. It's always a good idea to use a firewall and an anti-virus program. However it's generally not a good idea to use more than one firewall on your computer.

All versions of Windows from XP have a built-in firewall which is enabled by default. If you want to use Comodo you should disable the Windows firewall. The Windows firewall works very well in my experience, but it's up to you to decide which one you want to use.

Hope that was some help.

bhickey

I think that that if you're not sure what a firewall does then you should just stick with the one that's already built into Windows.

dunworth1

bhickey wrote: »

I think that that if you're not sure what a firewall does then you should just stick with the one that's already built into Windows.

+1 people that dont know might end up messing things up and having to bring it to a repair shop and cost them money

marco_polo

passingthrough wrote: »

i was told recently that i should use a firewall thing called comodo. is this an antivirus too or is it seperate? can i run avast and it at the same time, the person who told me said they were the best combination but to be honest im not 100% sure what he meant. can anyone shed any light on this

Comoda Internet Security suite has a firewall and a antivirus, both of which can be install individually as standalone products. While the Comodo firewall is an outstanding product IMO, it can take a good while (and can be quite difficult) to configure it properly, so unless you have a very specific need that the built in Window Firewall cannot meet you are better off sticking with that to be honest (I use Win 7 firewall myself for this very reason).

Comodo antivirus seems fairly average at best and in most benchmarks/test that I have come across it get well beaten by numerous other better free antivirus packages including MSE, avira, avast, and AVG (and quite a few others as well).

The least intrusive combination that I have come across is a Win 7 Firewall + MSE combination. (Although I previously used Comodo Firewall and Avira AV and found them to be a good combo as well, just a little more intrusive at times)