On Feb 22, 2004, at 7:10 AM, ec wrote:

> Let me explain the 'paranoia' that she has. First, she
> also has a windoze 98 machine that will be online, and
> it contains some (to her) very important stuff. She is
> writing a novel on it and doesn't want that info to
> somehow be copied by a hacker. And two, years ago,
> someone broke into another machine and wiped about two
> years work out as it wasn't secured enough.

Is it possible to just keep the Win98 machine off line and let her do 
her surfing from a *nix machine? If she can't do that, she can gain a 
measure of security by keeping it patched and by avoiding all the built 
in applications that have hooks into the OS. Simple things like using 
Firefox for a browser and Eudora or Pegasus for mail help a lot.
>
> Probably, since I didn't know about the NAT (nor
> understand that term) firewall already there, I
> probably will hook up the net to that avoiding messing
> with smoothwall initially. That is, IF I can disable
> the wireless probing into it. How do you do that?

Unfortunately, the only way I know for sure to do that is to run that 
'Connection Buddy' from Windows. But notice that you can have the 
Modem/Router unplugged from the wall while you have it plugged into the 
Windows Machine. First I'd just log into the Actiontec with a browser 
though and see if you don't get the same screens. (This will make sense 
when you see the manual)

Here is a site that explains NAT: 
<http://computer.howstuffworks.com/nat.htm>. When people say "Firewall' 
they mean NAT or packet filtering or some combination. I think the 
Actiontec has both but I don't know if the packet filtering is turned 
on. NAT is lower level and less sophisticated but for those very 
reasons it's more appropriate when you *don't* want to provide any 
services to the internet. If you are trying to host wed sites and file 
sharing etc on your computer and still be somewhat secure, you need the 
sophistication of packet filtering and you need to learn a lot about 
how to use it. If you just want to be safe, get NAT and set it to 
'outgoing connections only'. That way you can get out to the internet 
but no one on the internet can get in to your computer. Bad guys on the 
internet can 'see' the router but they can't see your computers. Of 
course good guys can't see your computers either but since you aren't 
running any services you don't care.

Qwest used to let you run a simple web site from their computer on the 
other side of the NAT. I don't know if that is still included. They 
used to charge more too.

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