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Do I need a firewall?

05 May 2006 · by Steve Litchfield
Applications, Performance, Miscellaneous Series 60, Series 80, Series 90, UIQ, General, N-Gage, S60 3rd Edition, UIQ 3
Q. On my PC I have the ZoneAlarm firewall loaded all the time, to protect myself against Internet-borne nasties. Do I need to do something similar for my smartphone?

A. No, there's really no need, despite what you may occasionally read in the press and despite the prominent presence of 'security' software on manufacturer support web sites. Symbian OS is extremely 'stealthy' when online, i.e. other computers on the Internet can't see your smartphone, let alone try to talk to it. In addition, almost all the Internet-borne 'worms' are targetting desktop operating systems and their payload, even if it were somehow to get onto a smartphone, would have no effect.

You can check this stealthiness for yourself by pointing your Symbian-powered smartphone's browser at Shields Up! (http://grc.com) and running their port probing tests.