Question about firewalls???

[bozeman]

For several months I operated my computer without my firewall turned on.

I have a mac.

I have a dial up connection.

Is this something to worry about? How would I know if I was hacked? Can you hack into someone's computer on dial up? Is there some way to clean out my computer if someone put something in it?

I recently turned on the firewall that came with my mac. It doesn't tell me when someone is trying to get in, like others' firewalls do. Is this built in firewall enough? Is it less of an issue with macs?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. It is much less an issue.

Two reasons:

1. Dialup. Not easy to hack a dialup. The speed, you see.

2. It's a Mac. Especially if it's an OSX mac.

[bozeman]

2. thanks

[huellewig]

3. The built-in one is fine.

I had my OS X box for a year on dali-up with no Firewall and no problems.

Check out Little Snitch:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10426

[McKenzie]

4. create a secondary account and surf through that

I'm not familiar with Macs but both Windows and Linux permit the creation of secondary accounts that have minimal priviliges. If you are worried about personal contents make the directory in question accessible only to the administrator/root, encrypt it and never go online in admin/root mode unless you have to.