Most preferred free firewall??

Windows Firewall on Windows XP SP2

no need to install :-)

Nah, that's the problem: You cannot achieve much security with a packet filter without good knowledge about TCP/IP networking.

Incorrect, at least in real world testing with real-world people behind the computers.

Zone Alarm is the best personal firewall application I've seen in use on any residential users system where the user did or did not understand security.

Windows XP Firewall allows users to be compromised without warning in many cases that ZA would have indicated some problem.

According to Zdnet and Steve Gibson, right? Stop listening to the shills and do your own research. Anyone who thinks Zonealarm is good needs to have their interent priveledges taken away from them. If you want to use a free firewall then use something that is pro level and free. Warning: can be daunting to configure if you stray from the default..

I'm sorry to say but there is no *easy* free solution that is worth using. My recommendation to someone that is looking for something that provides an all-in-one solution that is fairly easy to use is to get F-Secure's Interent Security 2006. It's not free but it is good and is probably worth what it costs. This is an all encompassing firewall, spam blocker, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and even child blocker suite.

Just use the packet filter of your operating systems. Most have now.

Yours, VB.

means: an extremely lousy host-based packet filter

means: destroys secure connections to your mail server

This is actually about the only good thing, but it's also available as stand-alone product.

the most recent bullshit

Yeah sure.

Hey, did you forget to tell about the unusable GUI and service modules enclosing the functions of this product? Hell, a demo version of FAV2006 updated itself to a full version of FIS2006 and stopped working because of a missing key.

I think the point of the two previous posters was a free firewall geared toward the average home user. I've played with Netveda and I wouldn't recommend the "average home user" touch it. Putting Netveda aside for a moment, most home users are acutely confused, particularly by those PFW's that have a component control feature. They'd be much better off looking for utilities that monitor additions being made to startup programs and services, than utilities that provide application and component control. At least the former would provide a clue that something has changed and identify what exactly has been added.

Uses a TDI filter to achieve filtering, which is about the second-most stupid idea I've seen so far. What about services and application that don't use TDI? This is not so uncommon. And, of course, the useless application control that adds unnecessary complexity. Not even want to talk about the unusable simplicity of the rules you can create...

Kerio or Tiny, if you can still find the freeware versions. They are the most customizable and flexible of all the free firewallls out there. If you can find the freeware version of either product, try it and you will like it, and you will see why I get rather persistent at times in my arguments with Leythos, and a few others, in my belief in software solutions like Tiny or Kerio. If you are going to go freeware, freeware versions of Tiny or Kerio, if you can still find them, are the way to go.

Oh c'mon. There have been at least 3 critical security holes in Kerio 4 which can be safely assumed to be present in previous versions and haven't been patched there. 1 is remote.

Yeah, they're all dumb as a door-knob. Hell, you can't even reference TCP states yet create some simple action like reject-with-tcp-rst. I would consider it unusable.

Wow, you're a right f****ng cunt.