I was on an Internet security site a while back that used a downloaded program to test your securtity. I tried it and my PC is secure both ways. I use Zone Alarm and according to this site (I can't remenber the name or url and I'm at work so it's not in my favourites) Zone Alarm is the only fire wall that will stop a program pretending to be another program from getting out to the net. The senario is that you have allowed access to the net to one program, say ICQ.exe and a malicious program renames it self to ICQ.exe. From what I read this program can now access the internet through all firewalls execept Zone Alarm which creates a key based on the contents of exe not just the name. So in ZoneAlarm you would get a new alert saying that ICQ.exe was trying to access the internet. You know that you have already allowed access to this program so when you investigate you find its another program not ICQ.