Are desktop firewalls really up to the challenge?

[W1nTry]

This is an interesting read, how much truth there is to it will vary from user to user

Desktop firewalls are pants

Leak like a sieve, not worth having, says boffin


By Nick Farrell: Friday 25 August 2006, 08:11

 A GERMAN SECURITY boffin has penned a damning report on the state of home firewalls.
Professor Stefan Wolf, of the Polytechnic University of Lippe and Hoexter, said that firewalls used with home PCs were not comparable to the powerful firewalls used in companies or public organisations. Wolf said that home firewalls often cause more problems than they solved.

He cited a recent test in the PC Professionell magazine where only one of the six firewall programs could stop an attack. Most of them were quickly switched off. Wolf said that browsers were allowed to make a connection with the internet and this meant that all a hacker had to do was target it.

Users needed too much technical knowledge to run an effective firewall so that it was absolutely error-free.

Wolf said that home users would be better off keeping their operating system, browser and anti-virus programs constantly up to date.

More here. µ

[Arcmanov]

All too true.  For example, to keep Zone Alarm running effectively, a rather sound knowledge of networking (and by extension, firewall concepts) is an absolute must, or else the user would be screaming in frustration.
Hence the reason a lot of users just dont bother.  Firewall tech can be made only so user friendly, lest it become a joke of a program.