PC Tools Firewall Plus: free firewall for Windows Vista/XP/2000

Sure, Windows comes with a basic firewall, but when it comes to protecting your computer from malicious attacks, you can never be too careful. PC Tools Firewall Plus is a powerful firewall from the makers of Spyware Doctor. And it also happens to be free.

PC Tools Firewall Plus gives you much more control over your firewall than the built in Windows Firewall application. There's an expert mode for advanced users, and a normal mode for umm.. normal users. The first time you run the firewall you'll get a bunch of pop-ups asking if you want to allow any programs you're currently running to access the internet.

But once you get past that, you can leave the firewall running in the background and pretty much ignore it. If you want to edit advanced permissions, view your history, or see the packets that have been blocked, you can do that. There's also a new stealth mode that lets your system hide from other computers on the network. In other words, you can connect to other computers, but they cannot connect to you.

[via Cybernet]

Tags: firewall, firewall-plus, freeware, pc-tools, spyware-doctor