Firewall - OSX 10.2 (Jaguar)

[fartheststar]

Hi. When I bought my mac last August, I bought Norton personal firewall. I didn't know about OSX firewall at the time. I finally got so irritated with it questioning me every time it tried to "live update" and every time I tried to edit my website with Macromedia, I uninstalled it and activated the OSX firewall.

Now that I am using that one instead of Norton, I don't get all the errors that I did before, a good thing!

My question: Can I trust that the OSX firewall is doing a good job for me? One thing I did like about Norton is that there was logging and it would notify me if someone got through the firewall (nothing ever did). Also, I hear that the OSX firewall doesn't stop "ping" commands, is that a problem?

Should I be worried about using the OSX firewall? Is there anything I can do to make my OSX firewall better or is there a certain way to configure it for optimal safety?

Running OSX 10.2.8. Thanks!

 

[abhishekit]

well no firewall is 100% secure, but if you really wanna check for leaks goto http://grc.com/default.htm ...click shieldsup which is in hotspots section,..then read the text below 'proceed' button..then click proceed...its pretty reliable
cheers

edit: to check ur firwall settings, write 'sudo ipfw list' at your terminal. it wd ask your password and show u the list..