Thank you, Michelle!!

The makers of zone alarm are offering a promotion, a free for one year deal on their antispyware (and it comes with zone alarm pro). You need to hurry though because I think tomorrow this great deal ends.

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/promotions/sum/sum_promo.jsp?menu=1

Better than Windows Firewall (isn't everything), but leaktests are the new firewall battleground.

For defence against malicious packets from outside, a NAT router or a fully patched Windows with windows firewall, is about as good as it gets.

The new battle is against sneaky outgoing attempts, misuse of interprocess communication - in essence, something which does not have outgoing access co-opting the services of something which does.

The most basic example of this (not really a firewall issue), is a "web bug" image in HTML formatted email, allowing a remote server to detect when it is viewed - that is a very basic example, proper "leaks" can be far more involved - another basic one is calling Internet Explorer to pass a ? parameter to a remote site, a parameter which could be your password or credit card number!

Worth noting, anti leak is the firewall defence against malware that has ALREADY entered your system, so Antivirus and and a suitable attitude to risk are also part of that protection.

IMPORTANT UPDATE!!

Looks like I jumped the gun on this one, folks. If you go to

http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php

and check out their test results for Ashampoo Firewall, you'll see far, far down on the page that this firewall has HORRIBLE ratings!

So, after further investigation, I really do NOT suggest you use this particular offering from Ashampoo. It sounded so promising, too........

Yes, that's right gang, yet another top-notch Ashampoo utility for FREE. A short description as follows:

"If you don’t have a degree in computer science, using a firewall program can be quite frustrating. In addition to all the confusing jargon, current firewalls are getting to be very big programs. Sometimes you have the feeling that you’re installing an entire office suite instead of a basic network tool.
The brand-new Ashampoo FireWall FREE is different. Its Configuration Assistant guides you through every step of the simple setup process. And Easy Mode makes using it a breeze – you don’t need any special technical knowledge and everything is explained clearly.
Ashampoo FireWall FREE is also amazingly compact. Even with its four additional security tools it’s a tiny program that uses very little memory and computer resources. You get the heavy-duty protection without heavyweight overload on your system."

You can get yours at http://www2.ashampoo.com/webcache/html/1/product_2_0050__.htm

All you need to do is to register the program, and a free license key will be issued to you. I've been using Comodo Firewall up till now, but I believe that's about to change!

Enjoy, all....