This is the second article in a three-part series that will examine privacy concerns as they relate to security. The first installment in the series examined hardware-based privacy issues and solutions. This article will discuss software-based issues and solutions. As we shall see, some software is designed to safeguard privacy, while other software seems designed to compromise it.
In the previous article in this series, we covered hardware firewall-routers. Firewalls are an important part of a privacy protection strategy because they prevent intruders from gaining access to valuable information that is stored on a computer. Now let's look at firewalls that run on individual computers. Known as personal, or PC, firewalls, these are different from hardware firewall-routers in several ways. The best PC firewalls track incoming and outgoing traffic, and allow users to set up rules governing what programs on the computer will be allowed to establish connections to the Internet. Best of all, many PC firewalls are free, although even if they are available commercially, prices tend to be reasonable.
News: Privacy
