The following items are the things you should do as an Internet user:

• Install antivirus software to your machine and make sure you maintain it. There is more than a dozen good antivirus software that you can purchase or download free. Antivirus software scans your computer every certain period to check for known viruses. It also checks for viruses on your incoming electronic mails. Antivirus software usually has regular monthly updates to check that the software can catch up with the new virus definitions. This updates are very important because everyday new viruses are being discovered. Though there are automatic updates, it is still better to regularly check the vendor’s website.

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What Dumb Firewalls don’t do

a)They don’t monitor your configuration files

b)They don’t monitor your registry

c)They don’t monitor your startup folders

d)They don’t scan for or remove Trojans

e)They don’t provide a list of socket connections

f)They don’t do what a real firewall does, keep out unwanted products in an intelligent manner and not on a per application basis.

Real protection will only come from an official antivirus program which provides a multitude of useful protection, performs regular scans on your disk to check up on any missed viruses, and watches over your entire system.

Dumb Firewall programs provide absolutely NO protection whatsoever against backdoor programs that come built into Internet servers such as NetSnooper Gold. NetSnooper is an example of what ANY program can do to gain access to your PC once it has passed through posing as one of your trusted Internet programs.

If the user were to trust a program such as mIRC they would also be trusting any backdoored scripts that the program may load. Your computer could also be a host used to infect other computers. All of this can easily be done without even so much as a single warning bell from a Dumb Firewall.

With technology now moving faster than ever and vocabulary not being defined quickly enough, there are no exact technical terms today that are compiled into a list of rules restricting what makes up a firewall and what doesn’t. New words used on the Internet such as Stealth, Drone, R.A.T, Key Logger, and many others are not yet solidly defined in dictionary terms. Until now, we have only relied upon urban dictionaries and through word of mouth to know their definitions. With such a hopeless case in front of us, the only thing that we can do is to keep ourselves updated, be resourceful, and be sensitive to the changes of time. One blink and you will miss it.