Firewalls are programs or hardware that act as a buffer between your computer and the internet. This page will focus on the best software-based firewalls.

Sometimes software firewalls get a bad rap because they are “too noisy” with the alert boxes. While this can annoy the novice, the alerts simply mean the program is doing it’s job. Just about every software firewall eventually becomes more “quiet” after it learns and remembers which of your programs access the net regularly.

Now that you know the jist of how these programs work, here are the top free programs.

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