Get complete protection for your Windows PC with ESET Smart Security - Incorporating NOD32 Antivirus and ESET Personal Firewall. Tutorial 3 - Firewall Alerts

When Smart Security is set to interactive filtering mode, you will encounter two kinds of alert window. Outbound traffic alerts and inbound traffic alerts. Let's take a look at outbound traffic alerts first, since these are the most common type. When an outbound traffic alert occurs, you will see the following window:-

Eset Firewall has detected a program, in this example Internet Explorer, trying to connect to another computer on the Internet. This is normal behaviour for most Internet enabled software. If you trust the application, you can click on "Allow" to allow it to connect to the Internet or "Deny" if you do not recognize it. You should allow "Host Processes for Windows Services" and/or "Generic Host Processes for Windows Services" to connect, as these are part of Windows and are needed for normal Internet connectivity.

If you don't want to be alerted next time this application tries to connect, tick the box labelled "Remember action (create rule)" before you click "Allow". This will create a "network rule" that tells ESET Smart Security that this program is cleared for internet access. If this option is not available, then you are running an account without administrative rights. You will have to switch to an account with administrative rights before you can create this rule.

If you tick "Temporarily remember action for the process" then ESET Firewall will allow the program to connect while it is running. Once the application is closed, the rule is forgotten and ESET Firewall will ask you again next time it is run.

Time to have a look at the other type of alert, an inbound traffic alert:-

The options for the Inbound traffic alert are the same as for the Outbound traffic alert, but this type of alert is much more unusual. Only special software needs to listen for and accept incoming connections from the Internet. You should be certain that you trust an application before you grant it this special privilege.

Trojan horse software and other malware which allows hackers to connect to your PC will ask for an inbound connection, so be extra careful and remember that you can always do a web search for the name of the application as shown in the alert window. MDaemon, for example, is an email server package and is not usually found on regular PC's. If you didn't install anything like this, deny the connection.