Huh. Windows Vista's firewall has outbound rules. I didn't know that until today. I wonder if it does anything?
Anyway, this is accessible via Control Panel (classic view) > Admin Tools > Windows Firewall with Advance Security.
I use several instant messengers. There's a new phishing / trojan (?) program floating around on MSN Messenger. If you get the following message you should not click this:
Hey check this.. http://very.c00l-stuff.com ..brb !!In fact, as a general rule, don't click on stuff unless you have a good reason.
Amazingly enough, I have never spoke about OpenDNS on this blog. Your should start using this immediately. Here is their Wikipedia entry.
It's really easy to set up, just so long as you have configured your router before. To start using OpenDNS today, just change your router's DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (if you are not sure how, there's a dozen configuration examples of the most common routers on their web site here).
What you'll get immediately is anti-phishing protection and typo protection. There's an example site at www.internetbadguys.com, which looks like this screenshot when you are using OpenDNS. It has helped my mother-in-law out in the past.
To also set up the adult site blocking, see these instructions. There's no signup for the basic anti-phishing, but for adult site blocking you need to give them your IP address some how. This would be the slightly more complicated part, especially if you have a dynamic IP address for your Internet connection. However, OpenDNS supports dynamic IP addresses, too.
I've configured this for church, and it was easy and free. Totally worth the 30 minutes it'll take you to read and configure this. Even if you don't go for the porn blocking thing (if dynamic DNS is too complicated for you), use OpenDNS anyway for the anti-phishing.
Some important links:
Common router configurations
Adult Site Blocking
Dynamic IP address configuration
