At my wah job as a customer service rep we have a specific system we have to log into in order to be able to work. For some reason, during the hours I work I always have to disable my firewall or else the system absolutely will not work. I don't really feel safe in doing this, but I have to be able to do my job. Does anyone know if this a great risk to the safety of my pc? I usually have to do this at least 6 hrs a day for 4-5 days a week.

Ask the company which ports need to be open for it to work. The other option is to get a firewall you can put in learning mode and fire up the application and it will ask if you should block or allow certain traffic from certain ports. Once working you can take it out of learning mode.

Hmm, that is an idea there Matthew. However, I'm not so sure that my company would tell me that. It's basically a well known rule there to disable firewalls, but to always have a decent anti-virus program installed just in case something tries to sneak in. Not the best of policies in my opinion.

Defiantly worth ringing your companies Helpdesk Department, these things can be resolved quite quickly.

Something tells me this is a easiest path versus a have to. You should be able to tell your computer to allow you to connect to whatever you need to without taking down a firewall. Firewalls aren't meant to block everything (well not all at least) but to keep out things deemed unwanted or unsafe. However since its a work at home job you can't be sure everyone is inelligent enough to configure their computer and it is just easier to tell people to take down their firewall.

Personally unless it paid enough to purchase a cheap computer just for that job I wouldn't risk it. All it takes is one thing, anti-virus or not and your whole system could be compromised. I haven't seen a work at home job I could work through a company that paid well enough for that yet though.

I don't think that it is a huge risk personally as long as you are careful with the anti-virus you run. It's not the best of things, but honestly I only got my first firewall about 14 months ago and my machine ran fine before then. I have no qualms turning it off again.

But I would also think that you can just tell the firewall to allow that site.

Like others have said, it would be better to find out the ports from your company and just opening them instead of disabling your firewall and opening all of your ports. Also, I would have a good anti-virus protection if your company isn't willing to tell you and that it's up to date as without a firewall your vulnerable to attacks. If your using Windows then I would highly recommend that you always get the latest updates with the latest service packs as anti-virus protection can't protect you from everything. With windows updates and anti-virus protection I believe that you should be fine.

Well, this job in particular is my main bread winner. I have other jobs but this one helps me make around $1600 a month and I couldn't really afford to give it up over a firewall issue. I will definitely check with tech support, but they've always told everyone to disable them while working. I'm not that technically inclined myself and was wondering how I might add my work site to the firewall so that I can have it enabled, but allow my work site to go through? Part of the problem is that my job sends my customer service scripts for each call I answer through popups. Is there any way you can adjust the settings of a firewall to allow certain popups?

You should be able to set the firewall to allow the source, not the popus, as presumably each has a different url address, which would also need added to any popup blocker you run through your browser or anti-virus. The firewall is interested in the route the message takes not the actual url of it once you receive it. I would try contacting the technical support for your job and asking them if they can specify how to set up your firewall instead of turning it off.

You might meet a few problems if you are unlucky and have a router like mine. Mine is unwilling to remember any settings that I put into it, and within a few minutes resets back to the defaults.....

And since my firewall is built into my router, well, I just disable it....so much easier

We are also required to disable any and all popup blockers while working. Otherwise, it would be impossible for my scripts to popup as my calls came in. I don't feel totally safe about this, but I have to follow the rules if I expect to keep this much needed job. I just make sure to re-enable everything as soon as my shift ends for the day.

I would think that pop up blockers are less of a problem. I am assuming that your calls all come in from the same sites? You can simply make sure to add all of those sites to the pop up blocker allowed list, thus ensuring your calls get through but that nothing else does.

It is safe if you just visit well know web sites.

Which shouldn't be too hard really. I mean you are working right, so you wouldn't be going all over the place?

Or are you required to use the internet to find solutions to customer problems? That I could see being rather a problem.