How many firewalls do you have?

[Tyler]

Originally Posted by James

this is actually quite a bad idea. If you get a rootkit installed, it can be impossible to install any kind of cleaning software (firewalls, AV, anti-malware, etc.) or when it's installed, it can be neutralized. Rootkits give that code root access to your computer, and there is nothing you can do to clean it other than wipe and install. The prevalence of them in a Windows environment makes it very important to install anti-malware software and keep it checking in real time. This definitely hits gaming performance when making harddrive writes, but is the safest way to operate by far.

Yeah, I've seen it happen on my parents computer one time. As for me, other than the occasional non-serious virus, I've never ever had any security related problems on any of my computers for the past 11 years. And before 6 months ago I didn't even use a router.

But I still keep that in the back of my mind and do regular backups of important files.