mobility and firewall

[Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy]

On Fri, 2005-06-03 at 17:08 -0500, Carl Karsten wrote:
> Here is what I recommend to everyone, friends and professionals, etc: Only put a 
> box on the net if you can afford to lose it;  So no primary versions of anything 
> (.html files, etc..) or if you are accepting submissions, it gets backed up enough 
> that loosing the box it isn't a problem.

This is fine for a server in a production system (with some sort of
redundancy), but not for a personal home system which might not have a
reliable backup solution and will contain unique files.

> > and on a mobile system you do
> > not own the router therefore cannot trust it.
> 
> Forgive my ignorance, but in this case, what problem would the firewall solve?  (I 
> am guessing it is what I listed below, but until that makes it onto 
> http://udu.wiki.ubuntu.com/Firewalls I don't see it as a problem that needs solving.)

Very simple. You are on a laptop in an internet cafe. Without a personal
firewall you are vulnerable to anybody including people at the next
table. With a personal firewall you have at least some form of
protection.