Re: How to stop "phone-home" activity? -- PCTECH

I would then stop using that site that is using unencrypted logins if your
information is important.

A firewall isn't going to stop home page take overs.

A 233 and 128 MB RAM, you are going to have slow going with the internet in
general, for a lot of sites.  Granted there are some software based
firewalls with small footprints, but they still tend to be resource hogs, to
a degree, especially if you are running anti-virus in conjunction.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Bale" <dbale@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pctech@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 4:39 PM
Subject: [PCTECH] How to stop "phone-home" activity?


> Thanks everyone!
>
> I feel so much better about my router/firewall setup now!
>
> But I'd still like to address "phone-home" activities.  I tell the family
> units that use the home PC to behave while online and, while I believe
their
> intentions are always good, the boys tend to find sites related to Game
Boys
> and Playstation and Pokemon and Digimon that throw back a lot of junk.
> Before the HW firewall was added, one of these sites became the
> non-benevolent dictator of our browser's home page -- even after we
changed
> the settings, it didn't stick.  (I think SpyBot S&D finally got rid of
it.)
>
> For this reason, I still have my guard up, even though you guys have
> convinced me about the HW firewall capabilities.
>
> Since I do a lot of financial activity online, I try to be extremely
> cautious.  Surprisingly, one of the web sites I visit a lot allows logging
> in from an unsecure page.  While not directly financial-related in nature,
> it gets into personal info that I'd prefer to treat just as I would my
> financial matters.  (I get to a secured login page by entering in a bogus
ID
> & PW on the unsecured one.)  My current bank requires a login ID of my
> social security number, which drives me bonkers!
>
> So, one of the features that I was thinking a software firewall would
offer
> is the ability to monitor all outbound traffic.  And stop & interrogate
the
> traffic that I didn't recognize as something I initiated.
>
> Jim Franz mentioned "I use Zone Alarm Pro and have no problem w/Live
Update.
> But I set it to where I have to approve every connection."  Doesn't this
get
> to be time-consuming?  And how easy/difficult is it to identify the
> application that is sending and/or the data that is sent?
>
> John Jones mentions that his software firewall "detects when an
> application's EXE
> file has changed and forces me to re-authorize it for 'net access."  Might
I
> ask which firewall app does this?
>
> The other consideration I have is performance.  This is a 233MHz CPU with
> 128MB of RAM, running Win98SE.
>
> BTW, the reason I don't completely trust detectors for keyloggers and
their
> ilk is that they only recognize them by known signatures.  If there was a
> way to trap the behavior of keyloggers in general, I'd be interested.
>
> tia,
> db
>
> --
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