nat is a "natural" firewall?

John Smith · 2005-05-19T23:28:17+00:00

Isn't a lot of these nat "firewalls" befsx41 etc a pretty good firewall?you can't attack it because ports are only opened from the inside.So basically someone has to download something to a pc on the inside and then that software has to "phone home" so to speak to allow a connection through the firewall.sites like etc have nice tests to test the firewalls.How is this not a good firewall?I also run nortons antivirus on all my pc's and occasionally spybot and adaware. I have yet to be hacked or get a virus.IMO

May 19, 2005 23 Replies

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doubter 21 years ago

I know that RoadRunner filters viruses, as does Cox, Earthlink and AOL and perhaps Comcast. (Yes I know that citing AOL stretching the meaning of the term ISP!!) and I believe they also filter spam, albeit to varying degrees of effectiveness. I suspect that based on total number of users these ISPs represent a large percentage of the total in the US. Filtering and

*effective* filtering are two different things but any legal liability would be triggered by any filtering at all.

However, I was more concerned about the second part of your statement. I know of no legal action that an ISP would fear as a result of filtering*. It is this portion that I am asking you for more information about. What major ISPs are not filtering for fear of violating what statute?

Thanks!

*I am talking about email. Newsgroups are a different matter in that filtering there can jeopardize the common carrier exemption.

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Leythos 21 years ago

Yea, tell that to all the noobs running Apache on unsecured Linux boxes or the others running IIS on their Windows XP Professional boxes that don't know they installed IIS :)

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Leythos 21 years ago

If RR is filtering viruses, they are doing a poor job in our area, and also in several areas around the country.

There are many cases where "Filtering" or cleaning something is considered protecting the user, and if the user were to incur damage or if a kid were to be exposed to p*rn in a filtered newsgroup or from a filtered website, the ISP could be liable. If you talk to the legal departments of many IPS's, they are very careful about what they do so as to not get caught by that little issue.

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