What does a firewall do? ANSWER
Question. Thank you for the help…my firewall is enabled. Does this keep hackers from seeing what I’m doing with online banking, etc? (Just curious) What exactly does a firewally do?
Answer. Here is a simplified explanation of firewalls as they relate to your personal computer:
A firewall’s main purpose is to provide a barrier between the internet and your computer. Specifically, a firewall is supposed to only allow approved applications to transmit and receive data from your computer to the internet and vice versa.
This helps to prevent external attacks (an attack from the internet, targeted at your computer) as well as internal exploits (malicious software [spyware/virus etc.]on your computer trying to transmit data out to the internet).
The firewall’s job is to deny any unauthorized connections, and allow authorized connections.
There is certainly a correlation between firewalls and protected online banking, but really the primary protection for online banking is a secure encrypted connection (SSL) between your web browser and the bank’s server. Since the data is encrypted, even if the data is intercepted midstream (somewhere between your computer and the bank’s server) it should be safe because the data is encrypted.
In your case you are using both the Windows Firewall and your router has firewall capabilities as well.
I hope this helps!
–JD
PS here are a couple links with more info:
http://www.vicomsoft.com/knowledge/reference/firewalls1.html#2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_firewall