Operation Manual

Setting up Outpost Firewall
3 Setting up Outpost Firewall
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3.1 Basic Information
A firewall for your computer is like the lock on a door of your home. In most cities, we
usually lock the front door of our homes when we leave. This is not because the majority of
people are criminals or because we cannot trust our neighbors to mind their own business.
We generally lock our doors to prevent criminal types from snooping, stealing or doing
damage.
The Internet is similar. Most web sites are unobtrusive and benign. Only a small percentage
holds any threat to our privacy. However, because there are such a huge number of Internet
users, even a small percentage of them with an impulse to vandalize adds up to a very
significant number of people. For this reason, leaving your computer unprotected is just not
prudent.
Outpost Firewall is engineered to detect a suspicious connection. It is recommended that
you keep the firewall in Rules Wizard mode for several days use. Rules Wizard is the
easiest for you to use if you are unfamiliar with how firewalls work.
NOTE: If you have any doubt or confusion about changing any default setting, it is
recommended that you DO NOT MAKE THE CHANGE. Even if you do understand
the change, it is advisable to save or record the setting before changing it.
When Outpost alerts you of a suspicious connection request from an application on your
computer or from the Internet, it gives you some information about the request, such as the
DNS or IP address of the remote computer, the application making the request and other
data to help you decide if you want to allow the connection or not. If in doubt, simply
disallow the connection this one time. See what happens. If you are prevented from doing
something you wanted to do, then just try doing it again and this time allow the connection
when prompted. In this way, you can learn what your applications are doing and which
ones you need to be careful of or even uninstall completely from your system. It will also
alert you to the presence of a Trojan horse.
Note: A good rule of thumb when using Outpost is to keep the settings Outpost suggests
if you do not have a particular reason and the knowledge to change them.
In Outpost Firewall an access setting is basically a rule that you set regarding how much
of your information you want to let other computers access or how much information you
want to allow other computers to send to yours.
Outpost Firewall uses various security settings to keep your computer protected from
unwanted access from other computers on the Internet or any type of network connection.