My friend Iain installed a desktop-style firewall program on his
cable modem connected PC some time ago, and assailed me with stories of hacker attacks. It wasn't that I didn't believe him, but rather that I sometimes think of myself as hackerboy. What a fool I am: even script kiddies can be a bit of a problem.

So after trying out the bloated Norton Internet Security 2000, I have been lucky enough to find two free apps that bring more to the table. ZoneAlarm is a free "personal" firewall that will only allows traffic that you understand and initiate. The other is Proxomitron, which on top of managing proxy access is also a Swiss Army knife of sorts for Web page filtering. For example, the thing will stop pop-up alerts and confirm boxes, convert blinking text to bold, and even remove frames or tables from a page.

Why do you need both? A proxy will hide your real IP, the address of your computer, from servers that you visit. The firewall will notify you of any attempts to either contact your computer over the Internet, or attempts by your own machine to call another server. While you won't be exactly invisable, you will be more secure.

None of these percautions should stop you from having maximum fun with your cable modem. God knows I'm trying. My second PC, the old IBM Aptiva warhorse that I couldn't really upgrade, now has its own static IP. I am, for the moment, still running Windows 98 on it, more for the file sharing than anything. Want a domain name to go with that IP? Try Dynamic DNS Network Services. Need a server? I've been playing around with the Sambar Server.