I just bought a new laptop. This kind of thing is important, as I reckon some day I'll have to use it on some public connection. Could some of the most informed members please give us some headers regarding how the firewalls (or internet security suites) out there actually compare?
Well as i mentioned in my previous post the additional info says it all, a test is nothing more as a test and should be regarded as such.
It will by no means give ANY indication of how a protection is going to work on your system and network considering you got your own ABC properly taken care off.
Also this test it mentions access past your firewall in some cases if computer name and such is being used in the request.
This would be potentially dangerous, however not all these traffic requests are actually dangerous and the art of protection is to have your firewall ONLY to respond to real dangers.
If you want to invite a hacker then get yourself a noisy firewall that respond to every single request. trust me you will make a hackers day.
Some of the products listed here get low rating due to the fact that they allow some direct traffic, however if this traffic would be a true attempt to hack you then these products would kick in and stop it.
So the true art is to filter out the static requests and to block the real attempts.
Another issue from a home POV is that in order for traffic inside your network (behind router) to use your name, ip and other credentials would by default already mean that your hardware firewall inside the router has been busted and that your software firewall will not stop it anyway.
So really Jaspion if you make sure you got all the ABC's in one basket then any product above will keep you save.
Cheers