Kerio Personal Firewall is a well known and good free firewall. Kerio Personal Firewall makes it possible to block or allow any application accessing the internet. If an unknown application would like to have access to the internet, you are asked what to do in a clear manner, as you will see below. You can download Kerio Personal Firewall from the Kerio website (download: www.sunbelt-software.com)
For home users, Kerio Personal Firewall is free, however limited after 30 days. After installation, Kerio Personal Firewall works as the full edition. 30 days later it becomes the limited free edition, which does not provide the content filtering capabilities such as blocking pop-up windows, ads, VB scripts, cookies, etc. and other extra features.
If you use this free firewall you better turn off the Windows XP firewall. To turn off the Windows firewall go to the Control Panel, Security Center, Firewall. As shown below it is not recommended, but if you have one of the above firewalls you don't need it anymore.
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NOTE: Kerio Firewall has been taken over by Sunbelt. For whatever reason, Sunbelt has decided to stop the further development of the Kerio firewall. For now, this is no problem because the Kerio Firewall has been developed far enough. Most important: you can still download and use the software.
The Kerio installation is straight forward (as you wish you can choose for the Advanced mode). After a reboot you will see the bleu Kerio firewall shield. Opening the firewall, you will have multiple tabs with information and setting possibilities. The tab Preferences on the tab Overview at the left enables you to change the language.
The tab Network Security is the most important. The first tab Applications shows the appllications which are allowed and/or blocked, as shown below. You can always change the settings here if you change your mind.
If an application tries to broadcast, Kerio firewall will come up with a message what to do. Here is shown how this is done with the Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer needs the internet to work, which means you have to select Permit. If you enable the option Create a rule for this communication and don't ask me again, you won't be interrupted anymore.
The tab Trusted area (tab Network Security) makes it possible to allow another computer in your network to access files and/or printers on your computer (if you have shared files/printers). This is done by the button Add, here is shown how to add the laptop in the trusted area.
After adding the laptop, the trusted area will look like this:
For more information about FREE security see the pages about:
Other free firewall software:
Sygate and
ZoneAlarm
antivirus software,
firewall software and
adware software
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