The Coalition against Personal Firewalls

Rod Engelsman · 2006-05-25T17:40:14+00:00

Hey guys, do you really want people to take you seriously? It would help if you didn't automatically belittle, berate, insult, and otherwise demean everyone who posts here with questions concerning PFWs. Maybe this is a cultural thing, but it comes across as incredibly obnoxious. Stop and think for a minute. Why should anybody believe you? Practically every resource with any kind of authority advises people to use a pfw. SANS, CERT, government websites, MS, Norton, University sites... they all say the same thing: Use a PFW. And then there's you. (And one other guy I found with a Google search.) So I ask again: Why the hell should anyone believe you? I don't know you. I have no idea who you are. For all I know you all are running botnets and want people to drop their firewalls to make your life easier. Now I don't really believe that to be the case. And I actually think you may be entirely correct in your opinions. But you're never going to convince people this way. Frankly, you come off sounding like a bunch of nuts and cranks. Your delivery style totally overwhelms any substantive message. Give these people their due respect. Unlike the vast herd, they are actually thinking about security and are concerned about it. So they take the best advice from the most authoritative sources they find. That advice may be wrong, and the trust may be mis-placed. But that's not their fault. They aren't computer experts but that doesn't mean that they're idiots either.