Where to get it? www.personalfirewall.comodo.com

What is it? A free excellent firewall.

Why do I want to use it? The built-in Windows firewall doesn’t deserve it’s name and is more like Swiss Cheese. Comodo is currently the BEST firewall - and it’s free. (Here is a long list of benefits - but it’s very techie)

What does it do? Protects you from intruders from the Internet and checks if any nasty programs try to "call home" from your machine.

Who should use it? Every Windows XP user who still uses the built-in firewall.

How complicated is it to use? Download and install is pretty easy - under five minutes. The software will bug you with some question while you are using it WHICH IS A GOOD thing, because you should know what certain programs are doing, so you can protect yourself. It is a bit unnerving for beginners, but once you told Comodo which programs you use on a regular basis and trust the amount of security questions is considerably reduced.

Things I should know to get the most out of it? Comodo works mostly with so called Whitelists, which means it allows only "whitelisted" programs to work on your computer and send data via the Internet. That is why in the beginning everytime you start a program or a program tries to start another one it will ask you if this is ok:

Usually there can be the following different situations where you need to use your brain:

1. You are installing a new software - like pictured above - and you need to allow the installer to create new files and create new entries in the systems registry. Best way to do this is to tell Comodo this is an installer and it should treat it like one. The Firewall will switch into an "install mode" and allow all the changes. It will later ask you to switch back to "safe mode".

2. You are starting a new application (and it wants to access the Internet). Therefore Comodo asks if you want to allow that. If it’s a "good" program you use of a regular basis you should add it immediately to the list of trusted programs (Whitelist)

3. Often when when programs starts it will "spawn" additional other applications to run - this is pretty normal. Once you can allow it and add the program to the Whitelist. Here is the tricky bit: because sometimes processes are started that make no sense to normal users - like on the picture below:

How is a normal user supposed to know if rundll32.exe is a good thing or  a bad one. This is one of the weaknesses of Comodo - it doesn’t give any good advice in these situations.

4. You have caught a nasty bug and it wants to connect to the net. Comodo helps you to prevent that connection.

5. Somebody or some hacker software tries to get into your system from the outside. Comodo will alert you and prevent access.

Are there any drawbacks? Overall the software is very powerful and the options are a bit overwhelming for beginners and advanced users. But once you figured out the Whitelist philosophy you can never need to use all the menus. My system has been pretty stable with this firewall and it’s not a resource hog like many other so called security suites.

Please make sure to also read my essay on Anti-Virus Software in general.