The need of Firewalls for Personal Use

• For home use, firewalls work much more simply.

• The main goal of a personal firewall is to protect your personal computer and private network from malicious mischief.

• Malware, malicious software, is the primary threat to your home computer. Viruses are often the first type of malware that comes to mind. A virus can be transmitted to your computer through email or over the Internet and can quickly cause a lot of damage to your files. Other malware includes Trojan horse programs and spyware.

• These malicious programs are usually designed to acquire your personal information for the purposes of identity theft of some kind.

• There are two ways a Firewall can prevent this from happening.

• It can allow all traffic to pass through except data that meets a predetermined set of criteria, or it can prohibit all traffic unless it meets a predetermined set of criteria.