Is a Firewall Necessary?

[TrueBritt]

Barry Greenstein writes that people should have a firewall to prevent opponents from seeing their hole cards. Is this true? Can opponents see my hole cards if I don't have a firewall?

Thanks.

[MyMindIsGoing]

Kinda cryptic answer perhaps but I would say the less you know about computers and how to configure the operating system the more you will need the firewall. Even the most simple firewall (like the one in XP) will block alot of bad things.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/networking/learnmore/icf.mspx

[AncientPC]

People should have a firewall regardless if they're playing online poker or not.

A firewall can help prevent a person from seeing your hole cards (or anything on your screen or computer for that matter). However, if you do not have a firewall it doesn't mean that people are looking at your hole cards anyway.

Selectively targetting who to hack into isn't as simple as it sounds. Hacking into random computers with unpatched OSes is a different story.

Firewall is absolutely necessary. I get port scanned/newtear attacked/ and all kinds of crap nearly everyday. My firewall tells me so. When I first got my PC , it would reboot every now and then and I didn't know why. It was because I was being newtear attacked or whatever that is.