This is an excellent firewall and can filter cookies,it has ad-blocking and parental control features and can have security levels set for various programs,it comes with a year of online updates from Symantec.

Yeah, Symantec stuff is usually pretty good.

....and pricey. Tiny Personal Firewall is as effective as it's Symantec counterpart, but it's free:

Tiny Personal Firewall

Thanks BlackBeauty,had a look at tiny personal firewall and will download to try,thanks for the info

I use Zone Alarm myself, it's one of the market leaders and it's free as well.

Thanks for the post Tom,I have used Zone Alarm in the past and it is a great firewall and the "free" version for a home user is a very effective firewall without even needing to purchase the"commercial version"

I'm kinda paranoid (all the years online, and few virusses) so I have Norton, wich I pay for,..ZoneAlarm(free) and SurfunGuardPro(Finjan,free too) runnin at the same time,....oh, for I forget, PopupStopper too!......then I scan my system every day with add aware to get the spyware out,..............still necacerry even with all my defence.....boy there's a lotta stuff goin' through the net we don't want to get but is trying to get into ur pc all the time,..especialy these "doubleclick.com and such coockies that use your mailsystem to send info on you to it's owner for commercial use. a lot of them free host sites get a lot of little bug files to download with the pages(view source,is a handy Xtra under ur rightclick)
than there's hackerzz too,.....................

Anyone know anything about Sygate Personal firewall? 5.0

I just downloaded it and it seems to be working fine...and its free........

hey I never thought I would bother with any of this stuff, until something nasty got into my computer that prevented me from connecting to the internet at all. Now I've run adaware (removed about 600 files), and will do so on a regular basis, I've also installed the free version of zone alarm and feel much better about all the access attempts its blocking.

Prevention is better cure as they say. So to any slack bastards like me I suggest you get a firewall, virus scanner and run spy removal software like adaware before you get major hassles. Takes no time at all to get some basic protection up and running, otherwise its a major pain in the ass to rectify the problems once they occur. I found out the hard way.

@ pipeman - 600??? thats a lot.... sounds like you must be a frequent porn sites visitor ... just kidding mate... I also upgraded my PC Security, with help of Mr.Putard other day.. found bloody 318 foregin bodies! now I check every 2nd day now.....

Urbanhog