I use Norton Anti-Virus to protect my email and computer from viruses but I don’t know if Norton Anti-Virus stops online hackers when I am using the internet. In the past I have used paid applications and like the apparent protection these give as displayed in graphs. As I am on a budget, I am wondering if some of the freeware programs available are as reliable? Email protection using Norton Anti-Virus is great but I always worry about who is looking at my computer when connected to the net.

Norton Anti-Virus itself is not a firewall, rather it is a virus scanner with some good features including an ability to scan emails for viruses and provide protection against malicious scripts. One of the best free firewall utilities is ZoneAlarm (available from www.zonealarm.com). Three versions of this software are available: ZoneAlarm, ZoneAlarm Plus, and ZoneAlarm Pro. The basic ZoneAlarm is free and ZoneAlarm Pro and ZoneAlarm Plus are charged for. However, I have found that the basic free ZoneAlarm is best for most people. While ZoneAlarm doesn’t display alerts in the form of a nice graph, it does display alerts with useful text information such as the IP address of the computer which caused the alert, the time and date of the occurrence, and the type of alert. For more information on this software, have a look at the ZoneAlarm website.