Is there a good firewall out there that will alert you who a hacker may be, and also gives you info that will lead you to their front door (home address). If so please let me know. THANK YOU.
Yes, Symantec's Norton Internet Security 2004 will give you Personal Firewall, Anti-Spam and Antivirus. If you have an old version on your computer, you can get a mail-in rebate back from Symantec by filling out the rebate form and sending the "about Norton Antivirus" screen showing the older version.
in my experience, ZoneAlarm outperformed the Norton Firewall and I used the free ZoneAlarm version. I purchased Norton Internet Security when it was first released but I switched back to ZoneAlarm. I like the Symantec products but why pay for their firewall (unless you like the other features of Norton Internet Security). I use Norton Systemworks for these additional features.
As for McAffee, I've never cared for their antivirus software. I didn't know that they offer firewall software.
It is also the only firewall to adaptively "soft-stealth" port 113. Even the free version of ZoneAlarm does that, something the other firewalls don't do even when you pay fairly serious bucks for them. Port 113 is a problem even for NAT firewalls, but you can use the port filtering option to send port 113 requests into the ozone in an unused IP in the range of private IPs your router uses. An easy trick with most user friendly router set-up pages. Whoever came up with the idea of TTL (Time To Live) is good for a drink on me. If I were to pay money for a software firewall for home use, it would be ZoneAlarm. If I used a software firewall at home, I would probably be satisfied with their free version.
There is almost no way to determine through just software you run on your computer the true identity of a person hacking your computer. This is because all you typically have to work with is an IP Address. From this you can determine which service they are using, and perhaps if that service is cooperative, they might give you the identity of the hacker. The problem is that most hackers are somewhat smart, and will typically sign up for free or cheap dial-up accounts that are pretty untraceable.
The other issue is that someone might have a computer with a virus on it that is attacking computers at random unknown to the actual owner of the computer.
The best solution? A hardware firewall (Like a Linksys router), and software based protection like Norton Anti-virus, etc.
Linksys and other home routers use NAT (Network Address Translation) technology which works as a pretty good hardware firewall. The higher end VPN routers also add SPI, Stateful Packet Inspection, which gives the kind of protection you seem to be looking for, but they are expensive. Most home or SOHO networks don't need a VPN endpoint, so you would be paying for more than you need. Linksys's wireless G VPN router goes for about $229.00, I thought I saw it once for $179.00 probably after rebate, but I'm not sure. IP information is useless for tracking down hackers these days. There are too many un-secured wireless routers and APs in homes and businesses. It is easy for a hacker to find an open WLAN to access the Internet and port-scan and attack computers and networks all over the Internet from that point of access. Even a script kiddie can download Network Stumbler and get a War Driving kit for his laptop and he is off and running... amock! Real hackers are very rare, but there are tons of script kiddies everywhere. Modest security measures will usually keep them out.
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