Which programs should you allow to have access past your firewalls?

When we use a firewall on our computer, it gives us the ability to effectively become a bouncer with our system. We have the power to selectively decide who is able to get in to or out our system through the internet. If there is a program that is installed but we do not expect it to try and access the internet, we can prevent it from doing that. We have to be smart when we decide which program should have access to the outside network and which ones shouldn’t. There are a couple of factors that will help you decide which programs should be granted permission to do this. In this article we will show you how you can decide which ones you should let have access to the internet and which ones you should not. By the end of this article, anytime that you download a new program, you will be able to see very clearly if it should be allowed this type of access or not.

The first way that will help you decide if the program should be able to access the internet or not is your familiarity with the program. This means that trust is the number one factor that will play into your decision. If the program is something that you have used for awhile now or it is made by a company that you absolutely trust, then you will most likely be comfortable in letting it access the outside internet. It is the programs that are new to you that you will have more problems in trusting. But even if you trust the company, before you let the program access the internet, you should still check to see why it wants to have this ability. There are plenty of companies that started off trustworthy but turned into a nightmare for its users.

Another big factor in whether you should allow the program to use the internet is if that is what you downloaded the program to do. In other words, if the program was downloaded to be used as a text editor only, then there is no reason why it should need the internet. The only reason why it would want to access it is so that it is allowed to send usage data about you and the program. That is not a bad thing in of itself but it also not a reason why a program should be granted such access. So when you download and install a program to your computer, make sure that you know what it does first. That will help you decide if it needs to be on the internet or not.

Allowing a program to have access past your firewalls is a very important thing. If you allow the wrong program to have this privilege then you can be setting up yourself up for disaster. This is why you should know as much about the program as possible before making such a decision. If you do not then you can end up paying the price later on down the line.