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You can get rid of it by running a personal firewall such as Kerio and scanning your system for spyware and what not with Ad-aware,Spybot-S&D, and Others

I took some precautions with my computer to prevent spyware but my roommate managed to mess it up pretty good, since then I have taken the correct steps to ensure protection. This is what I recommend if you want to keep a Windows computer safe from everything without paying for anything.

Whenever possible enable Automatic Updates for all applications (including Windows itself), if that's not an option update manually on a weekly basis.

System Protection:

Only use admin account when necessary.

Virus/Worm Protection/Removal:

Install AVG
Don't use Outlook Express use Thunderbird

Hacker/Worm Protection:

Enable XP Firewall (easiest) or Zonealarm or Kerio (my favorite)

Adware/Spyware/Pop-up Protection:

Don't use Internet Explorer use **** Frefox ****
If you have to use IE install the Google Toolbar
Run Spyware Blaster to give IE &/or Firefox more protection.
Install Spyware Guard and place in all users startup group to give real-time protection.

Adware/Spyware Removal:

Run SpyBot & Ad-Aware
In my experience each product alone doesn't get rid of everything, using both is the best way to go.

OR

Just take the Absolute Cheapest & Most Effective route and install Linux.

********
If you install Firefox you will want the following plugins, use Firefox to download the plugins.

Shockwave
Flash
Java

These are not in the right order, just threw em up there as i thought of them.

Kerio Personal Firewall - great software firewall, a must on any Windows box
F-Prot AntiVirus - another must have, antivirus software
Tray Wizard - extentions to 2K system tray
DAEMON Tools - mount ISO images off your harddrive to virtual CD drives
FlashFXP - FTP Client with loads of nice features
UltraEdit - must have text editor, nice features such as syntax highlighting
IrfranView - multi-format image viewer
Media Player Classic - replacement for WMP that blows it out of the water
WinRAR - multi-format archive app
PuTTY

I have found that Zone Alarm (in past versions) would sometimes block ALL traffic on a whim.
No explanation from the software, no warning, and damned difficult to figure out what to to correct it.

There were other odd issues that resolved themselves after uninstalling.
I tried Kerio because they took over an awesome product (TinyPF 4) .

I was pleasantly surprised to find that Kerio is the nicest firewall software I have ever used.
Includes pop-up blocking, application level permissions with MD5, and is very configurable. Nice looking (very important to style conscious surfers;). Low resource usage.

ZoneAlarm is gonna have to knock my socks off to get me to switch.

p.s. Has anyone tried TinyPF 5 ?? Im wondering how it compares.

I would probably install windows 2000 (not to monstrous like winxp and not too buggy as win98), a free anti-virus scanner like avast! or AVG, AbiWord (and/or OpenOffice), Mozilla Firefox (stable version!), a nice free e-mail client for example FoxMail, thunderbird or maybe Sylpheed, a small simple firewall like Kerio Personal Firewall, AdAware, some erase-tempfiles-and-clean-registry utility, the glorious Miranda for instant messeging and Automatic Updates. Should last for pretty long.

It's relatively simple to keep your parents surfing in safety. As many people have already mentioned, Firefox is a good start. But that's not where you need to stop. While Thunderbird is stil in alpha, it makes a nice email client, and has fewer glaring security holes than some of the more popular clients.

But where everything comes together is with the last two important pieces of software. I used to be a strong supporter of The Proxomitron, but it's very difficult to find now, and is no longer supported, so I've switched over to Privoxy which runs on most platforms, incidentally.

Privoxy is a local proxy that does filtering on all web content that you view, removing things like some ads, and all unrequested pop-ups. It filters virtually all malicious content I have seen.

A personal firewall is important to have now, and there are some reasonable free ones around. The ones I like take a bit of configuration, but they sure beat Zone Alarm. The two I use are Kerio Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall.

Sadly, both these products used to be completely free, but the same is no longer completely true.

Essentially, it is important to use a good browser, mail client, local proxy and firewall. With those in place a virus scanner is often somewhat redundant, though one of those might be a good idea too.

On the spam prevention front, I find Popfile to be an invaluable tool. It is, however, a wee bit advanced. I suspect that most parents wouldn't quite grok it. I've heard good things about SpamAssassin, though, and it might be worth the effort of teaching parents.

I don't quite agree with your car analogy there. While it IS a good comparison, you're comparing the wrong things. You can literally see your car has 4 tires and 4 doors, just by looking at it. You know it has an automatic transmission because thats one of the vehicles interfaces. You know the engine is a V4 (you've GOT to be euro if your car has a V4 btw... ;)) from either opening the hood or remembering the specs when you bought it.
Most of those are inherently visual elements. In the same vein, any computer user can tell you that they have a keyboard and mouse, a monitor, and some speakers. Some might even know the size of the monitor or the brand of the kbd/mouse (probably by the logo on it ;)). Quite a few users could also probably tell you that they have a "Pentium something", hinting at a very vauge knowledge of the specs when they bought it.

The problem, then, is that they don't know all the insides of their mysterious black (or beige) box. How much RAM? What speed? What processor? Sound card? Video card? HD size? Most people couldn't tell you that. But then the question is, what can you tell me about your cars engine internals? What's the bore and stroke? Is it an alluminum or iron block? OVH, SOHC, or DOHC? High or low impedience injectors? Interference design or not? Whats the total oil capacity? Do you know? Probably not (I certainly couldn't tell you my cars bore/stroke off the top of my head). Should you still be allowed to operate a car? Of course!
So in the same way that vehicle owner/operators may not have the foggiest idea of what goes on inside a modern internal combustion engine, the staggering majority of computer owner/operators have no idea what exactly goes on inside their case. Intimate knowledge of your vehicle isn't a requirement to operate it, so why should it be any different on a computer? Cars have diagnostic systems and idiot lights, why shouldn't an OS? If people want ease of use, then thats what you'll have to give them. I know it won't happen overnight (hell, it took the motor vehicle industry HOW long to get to where it is today?), but it *HAS* to be an eventual goal of Linux if it ever hopes to rescue the proverbial OS princess.

Now incase you're wondering, I use Windows XP. (Unfortunatly). I don't really want to, but for me to play all my games and use all my art/graphic design programs, I pretty much have to. But beyond that, I know roughly how Windows works and how to work in and around it. I don't have to touch a CLI (had enough of that in the days of DOS). I don't have to memorize a million little acronyms and commands. I don't have to mount drives or hunt down obscure libraries. I'd just rather not spend half my computing time trying to maintain my system. Don't get me wrong, i'm not anti-Linux, i'm just pro-me. I can use Windows, and my parents and sister can use it. Its easy, even if its a shitty program. That said, I long ago ripped off the Firestones. Both mine and my parents box runs Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, AVG, AdAware, and KPF. So I feel fairly confident that neither system is at great risk. Yeah its a pain in the ass, and i'd rather not have to deal with securing two boxes, but its the price I pay for the compatibility and ease of use I want, and my that familly demands.

And when the day comes that Linux offers the same ease of use and compatibility in a better package? You best believe i'm jumping ship and taking every computer in this house with me.

I patiently await that day.

I am giving up my mod points on this aritcle to reply.

Go and download/buy a file recovery program before it is to late. Tell your pop to not use the computer until you get the file recovery software installed. You should be able to get most/all of the files back since I doubt the virus did any kind of secure delete.

Your next step is to switch your pop to Linux if he doesn't require any MS specific application. If Linux is not an option then download AVG Anti-Virus. There is a free version for personal use that comes with an Outlook Express plugin to scan incoming/outgoing email. I also would put Kerio Personal Firewall on your pop's computer. Those two things should keep his computer much safer in the future.

It really does stink to lose that kind of personal data.

...but firewalls and AV software as well.

My hard drive blew up last week, and when rebuilding my system, I skipped ZoneAlarm and installed Kerio Personal Firewall instead... an incredible piece of software if I do say so myself, but it also has built in ad blocking (and configurable to add more blocking).

Not that that matters too much since I am using FireBird, but a two pronged approach is better than one.

KerioPersonal Firewall

If you're going to be installing a relative's computer, I'd just suggest that to put all of the nice tools and programs(Kerio, SpyBot Search & Destroy, Mozilla, MP3 and movie players, patches, etc. etc.) onto a CD or USB drive, and avoid downloading this stuff alltogether.

Grandma probably dosen't have DSL or cable, afterall.

[Instructions for disabling windows Messenger SErvice]

Your instructions are correct, but I'd note that getting spam Messenger pop-ups is an indication that the recipient either doesn't have, or has incorectly configured, his firewall.

Since not having a firewall opens you to many other abuses than just Messenger popups, better advice to affected users might be to get the free Kerio Personal Firewall, or another firewall product.

Getting a firewall and not disabling the Messenger Service also allows the several other Windows services that use Messenger for reporting to the end-user to continue to make those reports.

If you ever find you simply must use Windows again, for any purpose, allow me to recommend Kerio Personal Firewall instead of ZA, and also the fine products of LitePC, to remove the spyware that's included in Windows by MicroSoft.

Try Kerio Personal Firewall. The only feature I miss from ZoneAlarm is the "This program changes frequently" box. It effectively lets you disable the checksum on just that one program, while still using it on everything else. Very handy for the constantly-updating EverQuest client (and similar programs). KPF is completely free for personal use, and doesn't have the cartoony look of ZA. Also, I had problems with VPN and some other network stuff due to ZA. It would cause the problems unless completely uninstalled. Disabling all blocking inside the program or shutting the program down didn't help, only removing it.

Personally, I think it's a lot smarter to disable Messenger-related stuff from outside your LAN, rather than disable the service completely. Most people don't need it, but I'm sure there are some who do need it but aren't aware of it, and will screw things up by disabling it. And how would you send them amusing (to us, confusing to them) messages if they all disable Messenger? =)

You, and a lot of other people apparently, seem to be missing the point. We don't care if they block anti-gun sites also. I don't want them to, and the poster probably doesn't either. What we're outraged about is that sites solely dedicated to promoting true information and political discussion about legal gun use (hunting, target shooting, self-defense, etc), and promoting the defense of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution (yes, we still have one), are lumped together with sites that may tell you how to build a bomb or homemade gun and may promote the uses of such for nefarious, illegal purposes. This is what is unacceptable to us. They are censoring only one side of a political discussion.

When it comes right down to it, the NRA and similar websites talk about the same things that that anti-gun sites talk about, i.e., guns and gun rights (gasp!). Thus if they (Symantec) followed their own insanity properly they would also lump anti-gun sites into the "weapons" category. So in the end, this really is a case of blatant anti-gun bias. The filter creators want your children to see anti-gun information even when you've told the filter you want to block "weapons" sites. They've made the political decision for you that it's OK to show your children "weapons" sites as long as they are anti-gun sites.

All I know is, Symantec products are crap, they're implementing activation features, and now this shite. It's the straw that broke this camel's back. I'll never buy or recommend another Symantec product.

Other people have made recommendations for alternatives, but here's mine anyway to help increase the signal-to-noise ratio:
Firewall: Kerio Personal Firewall
Anti-virus: AVG

(Both free for personal use.)

If it hasn't been said, the best I've found (free or commercial) for Windows is Kerio Personal Firewall, availiable free from Kerio's site

Can anyone recommend a good non-symantec antivirus and software firewall?

F-prot AV and Kerio Personal Firewall are what I use on my Win box, and they beat the piss out of Symantecs offerings anyway.

Kerio beta 4 and AVG anti-virus, best free solutions for windows atm, imho.

Kerio Personal Firewall. Free for personal use, and it's not ZoneAlarm.

Since it's not ZoneAlarm, you can do things like not let it start up automatically and not lose all network access. It's really keen.

Check out Kerio Personal Firewall.

Today I cleaned a friend's computer from something which I haven't seen before (btw, it is already mentioned in four other comments here).

His IE always showed "here4search.com" as starting page which always reappeared after manually resetting it. Having seen similiar things before I tried AdWare and checked for some unsual things in Autostart. But after rebooting... it was there again!

This here4search.com-thing is part of the CoolWebSearch trojan and can be detected by Hijack This! and (which is even better) can be removed easely with CWShredder.
Nasty thing, but it was gone afterwards.

I surely do not need to mention that you should install some tools like a decent spyware killer (like AdAware), a decent virus killer, a small personal firewall and some other browser/mailclient than the duo infernale IE/Outlook, if you insist on running Windows.

(How do you uninstall it?) Actually, on the MS support newsgroups, at least one of the more vocal and experienced regulars keeps telling people who suggest newbies to do just that that that's bad and wannabe-hacker-like advice since the messenger service is used for important alerts to the admin or something or other (which never happened to me, but I'm not on a LAN and perhaps that's why.)

Kerio Personal Firewall is more or less the same product and it's free for home and personal use.

I'm not aware of the history of Kerio but I think it's a derivation of the free version of Tiny Firewall cos it works pretty much the same way. It gives better granularity than other firewalls like Sygate or ZA.

I've tried a good deal of the stuff listed. The following are the most intuitive, free, software products I have encountered. They increase productivity, and are stable.

Freeware List: If you can think of it, it's in here.
OpenCD: Precompiled CD with all open source software.
Doom9.org: Famed site for lots of media tools.
Trillian: AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo! IM software all in one.
AVG Anti-Virus: Free AV
SpyBot (Spam Remover): Free Spam Remover/Search & Destroy
Firebird: Web browser w/ adblock & popup control.
FileZilla FTP: FTP Client
Smart FTP: Free Client, better looking, faster
Kerio: Personal Firewall, better than ZoneAlarm
Textpad: Text Editor.
PuTTY: SSH Client.
CygWin: Linux emulation.
FFDshow: DivX/XVid decoder.
TweakUI: Microsoft's famed Powertoy for Windows XP.
WinAce: Fast, high-compression (40% smaller, faster compression than ZIP).
WinAmp: MP3 player, with this skin.
dBpowerAMP: Music Converter (copies CDs to MP3)

One last thing, don't use Outlook. Find a better program: Eudora, Thunderbird, or PegasusMail (in that order) are safer/more powerful. Windows comes bundled with great software, just like Mandrake - but their internet package leaves much (security) to be desired.

1. You can configure it and then save the configuration to a file. Then you can restore it if you reload the system or use it to quickly configure other machines (although I've not *actually* done this yet!)
2. Once you've configured it, you can set it to a mode that will stop it asking about new software it finds -- it'll just block anything its not seen before. This is good if you're rolling out machines for non-tech users.... e.g. I'm planing it for my folks' PC.

AVG AntiVirus (free for home use)

Mozilla.org: Suite (browser, mail/news); Firebird (browser); Thunderbird (mail/news) [all free]

OpenOffice.org office suite (free)

Kerio Personal Firewall (free for home use)

WinAMP multimedia (free)

Trillian IM client (AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Y!) [free version available]

AdAware privacy protector (free for home use)

AnalogX random ultilities(many freebies)

There doesn't seem to be a huge lack of free products that ship with most Linux distros, and I don't use it as a general OS enough to point to anything specific, hence most of my list (but not all) is Windows only. Sorry.

-bZj

• CygWin. The Linux-like environment for Windows.
  Mozilla. Use this for mail, news, and browsing if you like.
  Firebird. for FAST browsing.
  WS FTP Light. A FREE, FTP client that works great.
  Filezilla. which is TRULY free and does sftp as well.
  PuTTY. a free SSH client for Windows.
  TTSSH. is a much less clunky ssh client than PuTTY.
  iXplorer. freeware secure FTP client
  VNC hello!? remote controll software.
  Tight VNClike the original, only FAST.
  GNU-EMacs for Windows. just trust me ;).
  Dev-C++a free C++ compiler for those who can't afford VS.
  NetHack. as someone here said, you MUST have NetHack installed on everything...
  Free-AV.free Anti-Virus software for Windows, (mandatory these days). or
  AVG Free edition. another free Anti-Virus software for Windows.
  Zonealarm. my favorite Personal Firewall,, really!. or
  Kerio. another firewall that some seem to like. or
  Sygate. yet another firewall. whatever floats your boat.
  Boingo. to see where the closest hotspot is, hehe.
  OpenOffice 1.1 the Microsoft Office KILLER :) {really!}
  Winamp 2.x for audio/video usage in Windows, stay away from the new one :).
  Mark's Adding Machine is much better than the Windows calculator.
  SpyBot Search & Destroy The best Ad-ware / Spyware removal tool we've found, "IE is unusable without".
  Ad-Aware another spy-ware app "alas poor Windoze."
  Trillian a favorite IM, since we're all chatters @ heart. or
  GAIM since trillian hogs resources, "bad piggy!".
  Gimp image creation/editing. Who needs Photoshop anyway?
  EnZip freeware Zip Utility, Stop nagging you WinZip!!
  Iview is a great little image viewer. or
  Irfanviewone of the best image viewer out there for Windows.
  Audacity is a great little sound editor.
  Virtual Dub. a great video editor.
  cDex gotta rip those cd's for the RIAA!
  MAME for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. and finally
  XPantiSPY since XP is E-V-I-L.

And FINALLY, don't trust me! Trust the experts;

Go to the Pricelessware site maintained by the alt.comp.freeware Usenet group.
The

Try Kerio. Check the 'Personal Firewall' bit. You see, I'm a firm believer in the idea that you shouldn't have to constantly reinstall software because it 'started acting wonky'. :P

Despite Microsoft's press releases to the contrary, Windows machines are not secure and need decent firewall and antivirus software. I see others have already mentioned the Kerio firewall, so I'll just add that it can be easily extended with Sponge's excellent, freely available filters. (I'm using set 2, but there are versions that are both more or less rigorous). I've also AVG Antivirus installed it seems to work well enough.

Some other useful free utilities:

Tclockex
A small utility that greatly increases the usefullness of the system tray clock. You can have the date as well as the time, as well as a resource monitor that lets you know at a glance how the system is doing.

AboutTime"
A little applet that sets the system clock from a list of time servers. Works well and unobtrusively.

7-zip
An easy to use explorer plug-in that understands most kinds of compressed files.

CDex
A great tool for ripping / converting CDs and mp3s.

X-teq>
A very powerful utility that lets you change pretty much everything that's changeable in Windows. Allows you to set Windows update registration done, which would only be useful to pirates and won't be mentioned here.

The Proxomitron
A web proxy that strips out ads, pop-ups and other garbage.

I'm more familiar with Redhat, but I have no doubt Mandrake will come out of the box with programs that are functionally equivalent to the ones listed here.

Ost99 posted a link to Kerio in a previous comment. I haven't tried it yet, but from the screenshots it looks like a clone of TPF's free version. Kerio may have taken over development for it.

Windows:

Kerio /or Sygate for firewall (both are good)
Aladdin's free StuffIt Expander (unpacks a lot of different compressed files, including SIT and Gunzip's)
AVG antivirus (free for personal home use)
QuickClear lite (deletes IE cookies/cache/empty's trash)
StartPro (well, it used to be free. Gives you a nice list of programs set to load at bootup, including registry keys.)
Ad-Aware everybodies favorite adware/malware answer.

Mandrake is (of course) easy:

Got the Easy Urpmi and follow the directions to install all the different media sites. Once you do that (its just a cut and paste job) you can fire up rpmdrake and search for software by name/description/type/etc. Mandrake installs with a lot of the right stuff already. I'd recommend maybe installing nano (easy command line text editor if you hate VI/VIM/EMACS/ETC) and of course if you running a system with a NVidia card get the NVIDIA drivers (rpmdrake, but if their not listed NVidia will have them).

NEVER ever install ZoneAlarm!
It corrupts downloads, uses a *lot* of system resources and shuts down connectins at random (IMAP is a real pain with ZoneAlarm).

Use Kerio instead. It's free, and just as easy to set up.

- Ost

Kerio Personal Firewall.

Kerio is a rules-based GUI-configurable software firewall tool. It ain't a hardware firewall, but it's IMO much more configurable and flexible than ZoneAlarm.

And Norton Ghost. Because if you're smart enough to keep your personal data on a separate partition from the OS and applications, re-dumping a partition takes 15 minutes when things get b0rk3d, thereby beating the fuck out of reinstalling Winblows and downloading patches.

Some free, Free and not so free applications:

Webbrowser Mozilla Firebird (Win / linux)
Email Eudora (win) Evolution (linux)
Office suite OpenOffice.org 1.1 (win / linux)
SSH client putty (win) openssh (linux)
Videoplayer VLC (win / linux) or BSPlayer (win) and Xine (linux)
Editor Textpad (windows) Kate (linux)
Chat Jabber PSI (win / linux)
Firewall Kerio (win)
Anti virus F-Secure (not free) (win)

- Ost

Firewall - Kerio Personal Firewall - bloat-free firewall, very small memory footprint, extremely powerful, and it's free.

Compression - 7zip - compression utility that handles virtually every format, integrated into UI, and it's free.

Imaging - Irfanview - image viewer handles virtually all image formats, plays Flash and video, plus can thumbnail, batch-convert, retouch, and it's free.

Music - Winamp - Plays virtually all music formats (including WMA without the DRM annoyances), plus 2.91 now plays video and streaming video, and it's free.

The key here is these programs are capable replacements for a lot of more expensive pay programs. For example, Norton Firewall, Winzip, ACDsee together come to about $200 retail.

If you're runnning Wintel boxes, you add another layer with a rules based, software firewall that does an MD5 checksum of all applications accessing the outside.

Kerio Personal Firewall (2.0M d/l) is a great little app that does just that.

Run a service pack, then bring up a Search window to see what I mean.

If you're runnning Wintel boxes, you add another layer with a rules based, software firewall that does an MD5 checksum of all applications accessing the outside.

Kerio Personal Firewall (2.0M d/l) is a great little app that does just that.

Run a service pack, then bring up a Search window to see what I mean.

I'm sorry, but it is. Even when it's disabled, I've known it to cause problems for people. Personally, I'd much rather use Kerio Personal Firewall, with a preference for the 2.x over the 4.x series. AtGuard was great in it's day, too, but Norton ruined it.

Using Tiny actually puts you more at risk: PFExploit.c due to a buffer overflow bug. Tiny is no longer issuing updates, but they gave/sold the source code to Kerio who is now offering the same product (same source code) with patches with Kerio Personal Firewall

Also remember that the strength of your personal firewall is only as good as the rules you set. You can easily open your computer by accidentally allowing too much traffic through.

If you install a personal firewall (I use Kerio Personal Firewall), you can just deny the outgoing connection that attempts to download GAIN.

"06234_gain_trickler.exe would like to connect to download.gator.com. Permit/Deny"

I hate ZoneAlarm. I prefer Kerio Personal Firewall.

If you're a Windows user, the excellent (and gratis) Kerio Personal Firewall will make MD5 hashes of every app on your machine that requests network access. If the MD5 of an app changes, it alerts you before the app is allowed to run.

If you could get this going with every binary on your machine you'd have basically what you're asking for.

Tiny Software changed names to Kerio Technologies a year ago. If you're running TPF 2.0.x, you definitely want to upgrade to the latest and greatest KPF 2.1.4. Like always, KPF is free (including the "all new" KPF3, currently at Beta 5). Head to kerio.com to download.

TPF used to be freeware.

And under the name Kerio Personal Firewall (apparently the company split, or somesuch), it still is:

"Available FREE for home use. Business and institutional customers are encouraged to download this software for evaluation purposes."

As the OP said, it's quite good, doesn't leak memory as ZoneAlarm does (or did), and can be configured to the granularity of application, port, service, direction, and time.

It also can be configured to ask about connections not covered by its rule set, and to create new rules based on the answer.

Get it here

Kerio Personal Firewall

It's simple and gets the job done. Rules can be set to allow or block incoming and outgoing TCP/UDP traffic. It verifies the MD5 of the applications. Also eats several megabytes of RAM though...

Actually they do have your data. If you preview any e-mail they typically have something like

<img src=/spamcity/tracker.pl?id=177729299>

Where 177729299 is your personal id number.

This won't give spammers what they'd need to make a Bayesian filter work to get past other Bayesian filters, though. Some of the most important information a good Bayesian filter gets is not from your spam, but from your legitimate email. A good Bayesian filter notes who you routinely correspond with and what you talk about, and uses that information to prevent false positives. That means that it can go aggressively after stuff that looks like spam and not worry too much about catching legitimate email.

Still, tracking codes and other such stuff is why users should:

1. Get an email program that doesn't open links or display images automatically.
2. Install a good software firewall, like ZoneAlarm or Kerio , and configure it to block this cr*p.
3. Install Proxomitron to filter out what gets past the firewall.

Computer security and privacy can be enhanced considerably by taking a number of relatively simple measures.

Everyone should be running one. A good software for Windows one is Kerio Personal Firewall (Formerly Tiny).

It'll block everything you don't want if you set it up correctly.

And if that gives you BSODs when you permit something to access to your comp. You can Deny it first and then make a new rule manually, try the beta version available from the UK site only, or any of the other free firewalls that feature custom rules.

You might want to look into this freeware which was made by the original "Tiny Peronsal Firewall" crew. You can block based on ip, packet type and port.

A quick note: the original developers of TPF and WinRoute have now retrieved their software, upgraded it and released it as Kerio Personal Firewall, which is a major improvement in many ways over Tiny. This is the best personal firewall-type product for Win* currently available, bar none. And it's free!

(disclaimer: no, I don't work for them, I just use the software.)