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Antivirus? Firewall?



 
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sctirvn687
MagicJack User


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 32
Location: Louisville, Ky

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 5:56 am    Post subject: Antivirus? Firewall? Reply with quote

Does a computer that is connected to a wired router and is only dedicated to run Magic Jack need to have an antivirus program? Is it ok to disable Windows firewall on this same computer?
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mberlant
Dan Should Pay Me


Joined: 01 Feb 2009
Posts: 829
Location: Japan

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 8:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This has been addressed in this forum, so look around for more diversified and detailed arguments.

My capsule answer is that a personal firewall on a dedicated MJ host is not necessary, especially when placed behind a NAT router that has not had any ports forcibly pointed to that PC. I also believe that Microsoft Firewall is the most cumbersome and least effective in the marketplace.

I am sure this thread will attract opinions from all quarters, so buckle your seat belt.
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hsweiss
Dan Should Pay Me


Joined: 28 Mar 2008
Posts: 563
Location: Maryland

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

For the most part, I agree that a dedicated box does not need a personal firewall or anti-virus. But I say that with a caveat because anything connected to the internet is still potentially vulnerable. Your router firewall can take on all of the duties of the personal firewall as long as you trust the other users on your LAN (e.g., do you have kids Sad ).

And as for virus - lets think about how one picks them up. Usually they are picked up via infected email or "bad" web sites with ActiveX scripting, etc. If the dedicated machine is never used to read email (even web mail) and the browser is not used (wouldn't it be wonderful if IE could be removed) then the risk goes *way* down. Its not zero because MJ is still opening connections and using HTTP to pull down the ads that show up in the soft phone. But for the most part, the risk is low.

And the bottom line is that if the machine should ever start acting strange and it is thought that its infected, simply blow it away and reload it since you aren't worried about saving any user data.
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sctirvn687
MagicJack User


Joined: 03 Jun 2008
Posts: 32
Location: Louisville, Ky

PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 5:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think you both answered my question. It won't be used for anything else but Magic jack. The other 2 computers are used only by myself and my wife and we are pretty good about not downloading bad things. Also both computers are running an antivirus program and that tends to catch anything that we don't want. Thank you.
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