is a firewall and virus protection the same?

5 thoughts on “is a firewall and virus protection the same?”

1. juan says:

   June 21, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   yes is safe.. if you have antivirus donot worry went you done just make a deep scan and that is it .but the antivirus is no same at firewall.

2. Null Identity says:

   June 21, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   They are not the same thing.

   A firewall protects your computer from intruders.

   An anti-virus prevents computer viruses from infecting your computer.

   To be safer, you need both. You don’t have to pay for either, though, as there are plenty of free options.

   Both Windows XP and Windows Vista have a built-in firewall, so you don’t need a separate firewall if you’re using either of these operating systems.

   As for an anti-virus, try avast! Home Edition:
   http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

   As with any anti-virus, keep it up-to-date. Also make sure you regularly get security updates for Windows. Usually, the second Tuesday of every month is when major security updates are released. You can get them through Windows Update, via Windows itself.

3. liketolisten says:

   June 21, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   you need an anti-virus program http://www.free-av.com/ this is a good one, and its free

4. Frank N. Stein says:

   June 21, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   You absolutely need an anti-virus program, here’s two of the best, and they are also free.
   Avast:
   http://www.avast.com/
   Avira:
   http://www.avira.com/en/pages/index.php
   Only choose one of those as two AV’s will conflict. Also, there are free firewalls as well, that guy has no clue what he’s talking about.

5. icefyre says:

   June 21, 2010 at 8:00 pm

   Hello,

   That’s a great question. So, the answer is that if you use Windows XP you already do have a firewall (it may be turned off though, unless you have SP2 or above).
   If you are using any type of router (e.g. wireless router) between your computer and your internet connection then you don’t even have to the XP firewall turned on, you are still protected because these home routers use NAT routing technology. As for an antivirus, you don’t have to buy one, I would recommend you don’t and I’ll explain why in a minute. You can get free antiviruses from: AVG, Avast and Antivir (all are pretty good). There are also many known antivirus providers (TrendMicro is the one I like most) which let you scan your computer directly from their website.

   Now, I’ll explain the why you shouldn’t pay for these programs. The best protection on the internet is how you behave.

   As long as you don’t:
   1.) click on any links sent to you from strangers or from e-mail.
   2.) Surf shady sites unprotected (e.g. many lyrics sites, screensaver sites and porn sites contain a lot of bad code designed to infect your computer)
   3.) Run programs or open files you received from untrusted sources (e.g. people you don’t know)
   4.) allow people to use their usb keys on your computer

   You should be 99% safe. The majority of people break those rules and therefore get infected. I would highly recommend you use firefox for browsing as it is much more secure than internet explorer by default. I would also recommend you install either Site Advisor or Web of Trust (WOT) extensions on firefox. These will have little ratings on next to your search results (red, yellow or green) showing whether a site can be trusted or not.

   If you are really paranoid and don’t mind learning a little bit about computers. You can look at two products which will give you great protection for free. The less advanced one is called Sandboxie, and it sandbox individual programs so they can’t cause permanent harm to your computer. The other is VirtualBox. VirtualBox allows you to run a "fake" windows virtual machine inside of windows, so that you do whatever you want in your virtual machine and either delete the machine or revert to an earlier state if it gets infected. Nothing inside of a VM can affect your actual windows machine.

   Links:

   Firefox Browser:
   http://www.getfirefox.com
   (you will need too install flash from: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/)

   Free AntiVirus:
   http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html – Avast is the antivirus I use, excellent product

   free.avg.com – AVG antivirus pretty good

   http://www.free-av.com/ – AntiVir (less recommended because of annoying splash screen)

   site advising:

   http://www.siteadvisor.com – Site Advisor extention

   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3456 – WOT extention

   Protection technologies –
   http://www.sandboxie.com/
   http://www.virtualbox.org

   Hope this helps!

Comments are closed.