Port Monster - Good/Bad?

I was an avid user of Port Monster - but I now no longer use it. Here is why:

Port Monster listens on all of your ports up to port 1024. The good thing about this is that it monitors everything that goes on - on those ports. The bad thing is - I believe it is opening up the ports so others know you are on the internet. Let me explain. I recently moved from AVG to Avira because 1)We were hacked by someone and AVG did not catch it, 2)We were attacked by a virus shortly afterwards and AVG did not catch it, 3)AVG released an update which wiped out Windows Explorer because it thought it was a virus, and 4)If you go to www.av-comparatives.org and check their tests, AVG (and many other antivirus programs) are no where near as good at Avira and Kapersky. So we switched. Then something strange started to happen. I started to get a lot of messages which went something like "Your Deny All Packets option has stopped IP ###.###.###.### from connecting to socket <blah>". I was happy to see that Avira stopped the incoming packets but I also began wondering why I was getting so many messages.

So I went to Sheilds Up!'s website and ran the test package. Everything came back red. I was like "Say what?!?" The culprit turned out to be Port Monster. But I have no idea why. Under AVG - everything was green. Avira 9 + Port Monster = everything is red. After trying out several things, it turned out that if I disabled Port Monster - Shields Up! reports everything green again.

Under Avira 8 - Port Monster worked fine. It is when we upgraded to Avira 9 that everything turned red under Shields Up!. So something major must have changed in Avira 9.

Anyway, two things: 1)Any ideas why this happened?, and 2)Just a heads-up for anyone who may be using Port Monster. Check with Shields Up! to see if your system is showing all green or all red. Red (of course) is bad.

(I am in the midst of setting up a friend's computer and the Windows Firewall software gives a solid green from Shields Up!. So I am very hesitant to put Port Monster onto his system as I do not want a lot of unnecessary traffic if Port Monster affects the Windows Firewall like it did the Avira Firewall.)

Thoughts?
:cool

 

Well I dunno about port monster but PG2 (Peer Guardian 2) has been great for me ... it blocks HTTP traffic in apps, as well as having a blacklist of known, unwanted Gov Agencies, Education Facilities, Private Companies etc etc ...... My security is layered ... I have a HW firewall on my router, which I have customized to limit what gets through ... I have NIS 09 on my system, as well as having PG2 and Spybot

 

Halo: Thanks! I am on WinXP Pro btw.

Drizzles: Never heard of PG2. I'll have to go check them out. Thanks to you too!