Firewalls for 64 bit Windows 7

[digiblur]

That's fine, if you know what you are doing and if you have discipline to check for updates manually on a regular basis, at least once a month. Unfortunately most of the users out there don't do that on a regular basis, or don't even know how to do that. (How do you manually check for Flash plug-in patches, for example?) So, for most computer users out there it would be safer not to block the outgoing Internet traffic (applications "calling home"), rather than block it completely and risk not having security updates installed. That's my point.

A Flash program would not be blocked in my case since it is an app that uses internet. I'm talking about programs that have no business using an internet connection at all.... for instance TSReader calls home when it is started, why does a program that uses tuner cards need to check the internet? There's no auto-update feature in this program, it doesn't tell you when a new version is out, etc. So it gets blocked.