Other
Firefox 3.0.7 (adblock + keyscrambler + WOT) - daily surfing.
IE 7 (WOT + keyscrambler) - banking and shopping only.
CCleaner using - before when i close my computer.
Yes IMHO - It should be capable of blocking unauthorised outbound Internet Connections. - What most hardware routers don’t do is provide any outbound protection, so unless it specifically states it does, then you need a third party software firewall.
Whilst the windows XP firewall is usually good at keeping your ports stealthed (if you have it enabled as your hardware router should cover what it does) it provides no outbound protection and you should consider a third party firewall.
Any malware that manages to get past your defences will have free reign to connect to the internet to either download more of the same, pass your personal data (sensitive or otherwise, user names, passwords, keylogger retrieved data, etc.) or open a backdoor to your computer, so outbound protection is essential.
Are not that dangerous nowadays… spambots are filtered as spam, trojans must be detected before by avast (some of them uses authorized process to pass through the firewall). I’m pretty confident with inbound protection although, I’ll be an avast suite user for sure.
But it isn’t inbound protection we are concerned with but outbound protection.
Any malware that manages to get past your defences (zero day malware, undetected, etc.) will have free reign to connect to the internet to either download more of the same, pass your personal data (sensitive or otherwise, user names, passwords, keylogger retrieved data, etc.) or open a backdoor to your computer, so outbound protection is essential.
Not everything that wants outbound connections came in through the internet, you only have to have a look at all the USB Flash infections, etc. reported in the forums to see that.
).