Err, point of order - actual firewalls only block ports. Some software-based "firewalls" may have some scanning abilities built in for POP3, but they likely don't stop much beyond whatever built-in or added-on definitions happen to be there. Personally, the only time I bother with Internet Exploder is to run updates for the one Windows box in the house - belonging to my wife. I haven't opened Outlook in any form on any machine in my home for at least two years. I haven't had to bother with anything for "protection" beyond auto-running Ad-Aware and PestPatrol on the wife's machine, and keeping patches current on my hardware firewall, which is based on ucLinux. The Mac and Linux boxes automatically update themselves patch-wise, and compared to what everyone else in RL is doing to frantically keep out the bad stuff, I seem to have a lot more free time to play instead of constantly trying to keep up with the BS floating around in the 'doze world. /P