>>>>Why does a firewall need to protect outbound traffic? I thought the purpose was only to handle inbound.
>>>
>>>Well, if some lovely thing like adware etc. gets into your computer it can pull data from your machine over the Internet. I like to control outbound traffic. :)
>>
>>Ahhh, personal stuff. Got it. How does a firewall know what shouldn't go out? Or is it more that it doesn't let anything out unless you specifically send it out?
>
>Outbound firewalls will normally ask you to confirm a programs request to access the outside network.

A few years ago I installed SQL Server 2000 on one of my computers. I went to use SQL Server and got the message from my Norton Firewall, "Do you want to give access to SQL Server 2000 on Port 80"? It made me laugh and sick at the same time! :)

I had lots of Firewall messages from many software products (Microsoft and others) attempting to talk to the outside world. The less the world knows about my computers the better!