Sygate

At first it will give lots of pop up windows demanding you tell it what to do. Do the right things first time and these will soon stop. The first time you launch a program like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player - in fact any program which uses the internet connection - tell Sygate to “remember my answer” and “yes”, let the program connect - This way it will remember that if you launch that program in the future you want it to access the internet without asking again.

Each time you install or update Security Software like the antivirus it will ask if you want the changed program to have the same rights. Click remember my answer, then yes.

Only click Yes if you did something to access the net or if its a security program like the antivirus, adaware (see below) or spybot (see below) which updates itself.

At other times, if Sygate asks if you want something to have access to the net when you have not launched it - RealPlayer does this a lot for example - and if it asks if you want to accept incoming connections you have not asked for explicitly, you can click “remember my answer” then “No”.

These habits keep you safe from accidentally giving a hacker permanant access rights.