What Firewall program is good to use?

Firewall is built-in to the Mac OS X. You don't need to buy additional software for that. Oh, and the virus software is pretty useless also. I have DSL and have had a few Macs on my home network for almost a year and never even heard of a virus. This isn't Windows. 😀

florencevassy said:

I am pretty close to purchasing a Mac (I will probably buy a Powerbook). I am planning to subscribe to .mac and use the Virex anti-virus software and I was wondering what firewall software is good for a Mac? I will be using DSL through the local university which is behind a firewall but it doesn’t always
work (the DSL connection) so I will be using dialup through Earthlink as a backup and may eventually get my own DSL.

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OS X comes with a built-in firewall which is accessible through System Preferences->Sharing. There are however commercial alternatives that offer additional features if the built-in system isn't enough.
As you say Virex comes free with .mac but is unlike most windows anti-virus programs in that it doesn't scan emails etc as they arrive. It only scans on-demand although it can be set up to scan at certain times through a cron job using the Unix command line. AFAIK Virex mostly scans for windows viruses so you won't pass on infection to your windows using friends and colleagues. Windows virus do not infect macs so you are not at risk of infection from them yourself. This isn't to say mac users should take security for granted...

That's one of my favorite features of OS X - the built in firewall. There is a firewall in Windows, but it's hidden and hard to activate. I wouldn't suggest buying any anti-virus software, I hear it can actually mess things up 🙁 .

JOD8FY