I am using Jaguar's bulit in Firewall and I have only Personal File Sharing enabled. During the one day I was able to use Limewire without getting grilled by my parents for "endangering the local network", I found that when I hit the "Connect" button on Limewire, I was only able to connect for a split second, before being automatically disconnected again. I know for a fact that my internet connections and other settings are fine, and I suspect that this is the same problem that is stopping me from logging in to MSN, iChat, Hotmail and anything else that even sounds like it can be used to transfer files.

What I need to know is this: Are my problems arising from the fact that I have blocked the FTP Access port? If I enable it, will it affect anything else on my computer?


(I have already made a comment about this on the Limewire General Mac OS X Support forum, but that one was about the risks of using Limewire, not the firewall problems.)

I understand that Limewire and Firewalls dont go very well together, but does anyone have a workaround that I can use to a) use Limewire and b) not get grilled by my paranoid parents?

Any response would be welcomed.

I think it is important first of all to respect the wishes of your parents. Secondly, yes there are ways to participate in filesharing networks without compromising the security of your home network.

I could recommend a whole list of things you could do to keep your home network safe however I assume that your parents are concerned that you will download something and run it that will cause a heap of problems that you or them will not be able to fix.

Actually, all my parents are concerned about is the security of our network. Dodgy or Virused files are the least of their worries. As long as the network cant be hacked directly (as in, without me having to enable a virus), they dont care.



This "list"... do go on...

1. Restrict all of your internal network shares / share only what you must and provide good passwords for access to those resources. (This will minimize the impact of a potential worm if one of your machines is compromised.)

2. Provide good virus protection for all of your machines on the network. (This should protect you from software and content that looks innocent but isn't.)

3. Make sure you have a good and working backup for all of your machines (If one of your machines blew-up (software-got-jacked!--Can you return this machine to a good working state with minimal effort?)) (Can you restore any missing data.)

The above are general recommendations for good computing.

I make the additional recommendations for the machine you plan to use on a file-sharing network. I make these recommendations for people who download a lot of stuff.


If you DO NOT understand the various methodologies for tracking changes to your system. Then recommending a bunch of tools (freeware) will not help you if you DON'T know what your doing. So I'll skip that for now and provide some more general recommendations.

a. Make sure you are already employing safe computing practices for this machine.

b. If you can afford it use this machine for this purpose only.

c. sysgate - (www.sygate.com) makes a personal firewall. Install this personal firewall in addition to the one you have protecting your network. (I make this recommendation because it allows you to specifically authorize inbound - outbound communications to and from the machine you are using on a filesharing network.)

Most people think that they are protected from hackers when they install a firewall. Yes firewall can provide some general protection from cetain types of exploits but--it is useless if you are downloading and installing software that uses your internal-trusted machine as a launching pad to send information to untrusted sources. It is also useless if your interal trusted machine is used to gain access to other machines behind your firewall.

d. http://www.sysinternals.com/ makes a lot of tools for tracking changes and running processes on your machine (I'd recommend learning how to use some of these before you go live.)


e. After you download and try programs that came from untrusted sources. I would recommend completely wiping your machine and restoring it from a backup. (This way you return your machine to a known-good-state)

Many of these recommendations are time-consuming but worth it if you want download and run stuff from untrusted sources.

Thanks for that, that'll help.


Actually, I'm already using most of them, but Sysgate (did you mean "sysgate.com or sygate.com?) and sysinternals.com and their software will come in handy.




As for LimeWire and my parents, things are going well, I have managed to convince them to let me use it, they're still skeptical, but hopefully, these will sort that out.



Thanks again.

Your welcome,

The link is correct the name should read sygate.com

__________________
Lee Evans, President
LeeWare Development
http://www.leeware.com