Do I need a firewall program using Sandboxie?

[Newbeak]

I get McAfee AV free from my ISP,but last Monday,I rebooted the computer after a major McAfee upgrade was downloaded,and my PC would not boot into Windows. To make a long story short,a techie from the ISP took remote control of my PC,and tried to fix the problem,but couldn't do it ( he made some noises about it being a network card driver that needed updating,but try as he might,the driver update kept giving him error messages). As a result,I uninstalled McAfee,and am now using Windows Essentials AV,with the Windows Defender firewall. There are good free firewall freeware programs out there,but do I actually need one of them,as I always surf sandboxed? The AV is useful for checking programs/files I would like to take out of the sandbox,so I can see a use for AV protection. Thanks!

[Username]

I think that you do need to have a decent firewall because the problem is not about penetrating to your PC, but about data leakage too. So to prevent, say, passwords stealing it would be wise to control what and when tries to send what,

On the other hand, software firewalls just try to simulate hardware ones, so a properly configured router/fire may do the trick too even better.

Also remember to use UAC (Vista/W7/8) or something like SuRun for XP/NT, let alone a good HIPS.

As for your question, if you really need a separate software then Agnitum Outpost Free, PCTools Firewall+ or Comodo will do nicely--just check some data at matousec or other testers. Indeed, there're many firewalls but they come as Internet Security (IS), yet enable users to install separate components too.

Cheers)

[BoredNow]

The AV is useful for checking programs/files I would like to take out of the sandbox,so I can see a use for AV protection.

You might want to bookmark VirusTotal

https://www.virustotal.com/

Then you can upload your file and have it scanned by 45 AVs instead of just one.

As for a FW, it's probably ok to use the Windows FW if you set your Sandboxed browser to only allow your browser access to the internet.

I use Comodo FW.

[bo.elam]

There are good free firewall freeware programs out there,but do I actually need one of them,as I always surf sandboxed

Based on my experience using SBIE for about four years, if your computer is clean and you sandbox your browsers and most of the programs that you use all the time, then the Windows firewall is more than enough. I also think MSE or Windows Defender are good companions for SBIE, you ll avoid problems like the one you just had with McAfee if you use one of them.

Bo