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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TraderAlan who wrote (11268)	9/19/2000 10:11:52 PM
From: RJL	Respond to of 14778

Alan, You make some good points. Using dial-up reduces your risk of being attacked, but if you're on long enough, and you are part of a pool of addresses that are fairly well known, it won't stop some script kiddies from having fun at your expense. DDOS attacks would use target machines to launch attacks on other systems, but it's something you'd very rarely see on a standard end-user system. If you had no file-sharing, it wouldn't be that big of a concern, but the when port scanners are out there looking for systems with file sharing, red flags are raised, and some clowns will purposely try and get through to delete that data for kicks. Either way, if you have file sharing enabled, get a very basic firewall like BlackICE at a minimum. The grief it could prevent is well worth the relatively low cost. Cheers, Rich

To: TraderAlan who wrote (11268)	9/19/2000 11:30:38 PM
From: Nick Morvay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

With the dial-up connection, as you noted, your risk is a little lower because of the new IP address allocated at each logon. Impossible? NO! If you are on all day, like I am for trading etc. then your exposure is still high because of the scanners that could find an open port. I have been using the free version of ZoneAlarm with excellent results with a dial-up line. Usually get 2 - 5 alerts in a day that ZoneAlarm has blocked access to my system. Last week I upgraded to the Pro version which works with my ICS Gateway (modem sharing) and gives full protection of all port scans of all 4 PCs on the internal network. Try this site for a good explanation about file sharing and security. grc.com