Firewall settings Party Poker

[pottie]

I have Norton Internet Security. Had to turn off the firewall to be able to logon. Are there safer options? I do not know much about IT.

Thanks

[pottie]

Do you all play with no firewalls?

[Leavenfish]

Last week, I accidentally turned on my sygate firewall and was unable to actually view a table and had troubles with sending emails, posting to this forum and general web navigation. I think the problem is that WindowsXP has a firewall which I already had on and this second one being on caused a conflict. I turned of the sygate firewall and all works well.

---Leavenfish

[ohkanada]

I have a firewall (norton as well) and can play all of the sites. Anytime a program tries to connect to the outside world for the 1st time, I have to allow it to connect. Once this is done it works fine.

Ken

[pottie]

Thx Ken

How do you allow the program to connect, I've tried but cant seem to get it right.

[ddubois]

I have a firewall/router that prevents inbound connections except on ports I specifically allow in: 80 for HTTP is directed to one machine, 5253 for NetDraft and 4747 for Apprentice (M:tG gaming applications) are directed to the other machine. My firewall is configured to do nothing to prevent outbound connections, and I think that's ideal. I use so many applications and so many games that make outbound connections on various ports, I see absolutely no use in trying to constrict my computer's ability to create outgoing connections. Almost every application in any field makes internet connections now, for whatever reason -- I would be opening ports until the cows come home.

Yes, it's possible some trojan horse key-logger could get on my system, and now be allowed to make an outgoing connection on port XYZ that might not have been allowed had I been more "secure", but really, if a trojan horse gets in, why couldn't they just use port 80? Except for a corporate office that is trying to stifle employees from engaging in non-productive tasks, a firewall to prevent outgoing connections is just useless paranoia from computer neophytes who don't understand what they are hoping to accomplish. IMNSHO.