Does anyone know anything about firewalls and emails?

[156]

I have the McAfee Privacy Service, Personal Firewall Plus, and Virus Scan Online. Under the firewall section, there's a place where I can block out IP addresses, especially if it's the address of someone who's tried to hack in or send me a Trojan (and I'm not talking a condom here.....lol).

Okay, here's my question: Let's say I blocked the IP adress of Susie Q. According to my understanding, she would be blocked from being able to hack into my system. But, would she still be able to send me emails? Or would they be blocked as well?

[Hightower]

Yes she would. I don't believe that the firewall scans the email to find the IP of the sender, but I could be wrong.

Hightower

[MikeinMN]

It depends, but probably not. If McAfee and everything else are running on your PC, and you download your email from your local ISP, it *almost certainly* won't stop her email from coming to you. Best way would be to block the email address in question (or the whole domain) in your mailreader.

Most software firewalls only block direct connections to your PC, and are pretty "dumb" where filtering is concerned; they won't "see" that you're downloading an email from [email protected], only that you're transferring data from pop3.your-isp.org...

As a general rule, mail filtering is completely independant of httpd filtering.

PM me if you're really interested in this; I do this kind of stuff for a living.

[n567]

It depends on what I.P address you block. But if you are blocking user I.P addresses, emails should still go through.

And be careful, I.P addresses change, even someone with a static I.P address can change it if they're relatively well versed in networking. So don't think it's a completely fool-proof security mechanism. Heck, unless you specifically got a static I.P address, you have a new I.P address everytime you connect (I have dial-up, so I don't have any control at all, even).

By the way, 156, if someone sends you a trojan... well, it renders any type of security you have useless, so be very careful with your emails, and files you might download from less than reputable sources (i.e, Kazaa).

[ 04-30-2003, 06:30 PM: Message edited by: n567 ]

[156]

Thanks guys! I was going to call McAfee customer service on this but when I checked the site, they charge like $39.95 a call or something ridiculous like that. Knowing my luck, by the time I got through, I'd end up with some foreigner who doesn't even speak English. I figured someone here could help me.......and for free!

Thanks again!