Step By Step Note 3 - Tony's problematic firewall


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Additional note 3

A true story - Tony's problematic firewall

I recently did some work for a chap near Bath in England. He had heard that I fix computers and so called me - initially to say that his email had stopped working. He could send email but couldn't receieve email anymore. He mentioned a few other problems like "freezing" and annoying popups.

I visited his house. He and his wife seemed like very nice people. I did a lot of work similar to what is listed in these steps. Tony ran a firewall named BullGuard which he had paid for - between £20 and £50 - he had a 2 year license with 18 months left. Someone had recommended BullGuard to him and he was convinced that it was an essential part of his Internet Defence. He said that he had some problems with BullGuard Updates and that he didn't find their technical support people helpful. At that point I gave him a piece of advice which he chose to ignore. If he had followed my advice he would have saved himself a great deal of time and trouble.

My advice was to get rid of BullGuard and replace it with the free ZoneAlarm firewall and a few other excellent security programs I knew about. I just couldn't convince him. He believed that BullGuard was "holy" in some way and that because he had paid for it and his friend had recommended it then it MUST be perfect! He spent hours with emails and phonecalls to BullGuard Support. They kept telling him to reinstall BullGuard and to uninstall all other security programs that might conflict with BullGuard. Tony then became suspicious of AVG. All I could say was "I think you
should consider removing BullGuard and cut your losses".

As time went on I received over 10 emails in a 6 month period. Tony was suffering a lot of stress and lost time and his computer continued to malfunction. In the end I stopped responding to his emails having decided that some people just can't be helped. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

There are some important points in all this.

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