Applications unable to connect to internet, possible firewall issue?

Hello all!

Just bought a mac book pro after converting from windows, and am currently loving it, have fallen into osx quite well, but I have been rather perplexed for the past couple of days when it comes to MSN Messenger and/or Adium!

Neither of these appz seem to be able to work, msn messenger not at all, adium will connect if you tick http proxy in preferences, but cannot send and recieve messages, unfortunatly I really need to get one of them to work, and so am asking if any of you cool mac owners have experienced this before? I know of a few others that have just bought macs and are having similar/same problems with it.

All other pcs on windows in the house can connect to msn, so i assume out router is fine.

thanx a lot
Jon

Is the software firewall on (System Preferences>Sharing>Firewall) and if so, have you opened the ports required for MSN? To do so, click new and select MSN Messenger from the drop down menu for the Port Name:

http://homepage.mac.com/jtyzack/.Pic...SharingMSN.jpg

or just turn off your firewall altogether.

Turning off your firewall is a really bad idea unless your computer is always on a network you trust, which would be one with at least a NAT firewall. Most laptop users connect their wireless to whatever network is around, having no idea whether the network is trust worthy or not. Just turning off your firewall would be like a King taking down the walls of his castle because he wanted to go out, rather than opening the gate.

Not that big of a deal running without it on a Mac. There's nothing in the wild that can exploit a Mac without your admin password.

This would be a serious concern on Windows though.

Not neccersarily, a lot of people are falling for what Apple is saying about viruses. It's true that UNIX is many times more secure than DOS, and that Mac is also hard to hack. For example, even Mac admins can't edit the system files, so they couldn't install viruses there. The reason there aren't any is a combination of the lower market share, and UNIX being hard to hack. There are a few proof-of-concept ones though.

Anyway, always keep your firewall up!

Dude, show me a freakin' exploit for the Mac that someone can inject remotely on a fully-patched Mac with default share settings and no firewall -- then maybe I'll take it seriously.

Please try to use more appropriate / less vague thread titles :)

Also moving to Applications forum.

Read my post before making yourself look like a fool.

First, cool it. Second, from a practical standpoint (and I'm the "security guy" around here) turning off one's firewall is not going to be a big problem. This of course assumes that the user has enough smarts not to click on every fool link that shows up, and certainly not to click on anything that offers something for nothing, naked pictures of anyone, free software, etc...

On the other hand, since it's easy to open the right port for anything you need it open for, it is more secure to just do that.