ANSWERED firewall messages - can someone explain please?

Vivienne, if it recommends something be allowed, go with it, ditto for blocked, for now. What it thinks ought to be allowed is stuff like your email client, Internet Explorer, your media player, and known acceptab;le applications that auto-update and such stuff, mostly. There is an option to allow Norton Firewall to make "Intelligent Decisions" about the way common applications interact with the internet, without user input, beyond asking what to do if you do something for which it is unprepared. Read the documentation. You can pretty much set-it-and-forget-it as long as your browsing and other internet activity falls pretty much within the "normal" range. In both the firewall and your browser, you can custom-set privacy and security controls if you wish, but if you're not sure of what setting does what, you're usually better off employing default or automatic settings. And one last caveat here, a firewall will do little if anything to protect your computer from virus/worm/trojan infestation; that is the job of an anti-virus application. Neither a firewall nor an antivirus app will do much for you idf they are not kept current as to updates, and allowed to run as background services any time you are connected to the net. There are times when you might want to disable one or the other, or even both, but most "normal" users will have little cause to find out what those circumstances are, apart from shutting them down to do defrag or while installing software. And NEVER install software, open attachments, of run disks of which you cannot be certain ... period. Unless, of course, you're entertained by stuff like reformatting drives, re-installing Operating Systems and reconstructing networks. That Can be fascinating, but only if you're truly geeky and have a tendency to want to "see what happens".

If you'd like specific information about what to "Always Block" or "Allways Allow". list the applications in question here, and I'll try to help ... and if not me, someone else surely will be along before too long.

thanks that was helpful - i have got Norton antivirus as well and i run spybot to get rid of the spyware and stuff.

The firewall is new though and so i was uncertain about decisions - i WILL read up!