I have been advised that I should use my firewall to block the ability to capture my IP Address. I searched the Product Manual but have not been able to find instructions on doing so. Any ideas on the subject?
I probably have less that average computer skills. It's similar to driving an automobile, I can drive okay but I'm not a mechanic.
Hi pmillen,
There are anonymizers and other proxies you can use to obscure your address if you need to cover your tracks for some reason. What you are suggesting would prevent you from using the internet. Your IP address is what allows norton.com and other websites that you visit to know where to send the pages you are requesting. The Norton Firewall already protects you by stealthing all closed ports by default, so that you are essentially invisible to unsolicited traffic. You do not want to be invisible to all traffic.
Thanks for the prompt reply. I guess that I was given some bad information about blocking. It was relative to web sites capturing my IP and then sending me unwanted messages when I next use the Internet.
pmillen wrote:Thanks for the prompt reply. I guess that I was given some bad information about blocking. It was relative to web sites capturing my IP and then sending me unwanted messages when I next use the Internet.
What kind of unwanted messages? Are you talking hypothetically or are you having a problem? You should not be getting popups unless you are actually at the website in question. If you are seeing random ads appearing out of nowhere, there may be adware installed on your system. You also might be referring to cookies, which can be managed using your browser's privacy settings.
Hypothetically.
The discussion with a stranger started by me describing adware that got past Microsoft Security Essentials and, I think, IObit anti-malware software. It took several steps over most of a day to remove it.
He offered the suggestion that I block my IP because it can be captured and used to send material to my computer.
I guess I either misunderstood him (not likely, he was rather specific in his examples) or he was wrong.
I thought it might be hypothetical. A firewall will only allow incoming traffic that is in response to an outgoing request from something on your system - so a website cannot just connect to your PC out of the blue. I'm not sure either what your friend was talking about.
By the way, you should not be running more than one real-time antivirus product at one time. If you are currently using other products along with Norton you will need to pick a single solution and completely uninstall the others. Conflicts between competing programs will make your system unstable and prevent each of the AV programs from working effectively. You can use an on-demand scanner, such as the free versions of Malwarebytes' or SUPERAntiSpyware, to run periodic scans with no problems, because they do not have a real-time component running in the background.