Am I the dumb a$$ of the century?

[DP]

Firewall? I was checking on some things in SysPrefs and noticed the Firewall box is not checked. I have just presumed that the browsers I've used have all that stuff covered and I have never experienced any issues-no malware, trojans, etc.
So, should the Firewall be activated in SysPrefs? Am I also the luckiest interwebs surfer ever as well as the dumbest?

[Forrest]

Yes, you should turn on the firewall.

[Grateful11]

I guess I must be dumba$$ #2, mine was turned off on my MBA.

[Forrest]

On a recent OSX 10.9 install, I noticed the Firewall is disabled by default. This is different than older versions of OSX (10.6).

[JoeH]

The firewall is off on my install of 10.6, and I never turned it off. I think it has always been optional and not on by default.

Edit. Just checked the Help section and that confirmed my recollection. The statement there was that teh OS shipped with all services off by default, and had to be enabled to be active. The firewall was listed as an additional level of security that could be turned on.

[space-time]

the century is still young. there is plenty of time to be outclassed

[silvarios]

Forrest wrote:
On a recent OSX 10.9 install, I noticed the Firewall is disabled by default. This is different than older versions of OSX (10.6).

Pretty sure OS X has never enabled the firewall by default.

[Numo]

space-time wrote:
the century is still young. there is plenty of time to be outclassed

And the competition will be fierce.

[rgG]

Ammo wrote:
[quote=space-time]
the century is still young. there is plenty of time to be outclassed

And the competition will be fierce.
Doubtful you will hold the title for more than an hour or two, at most.

[Paul F.]

silvarios wrote:
[quote=Forrest]
On a recent OSX 10.9 install, I noticed the Firewall is disabled by default. This is different than older versions of OSX (10.6).

Pretty sure OS X has never enabled the firewall by default.
Well, I'm not so sure of that... I did some Mavericks installs that "killed" a messenging app we use at work.. Finally figured out it was the OSX firewall - which had been off, but was on after the Mavericks install. Might have been something else, but I sure didn't turn it on (our firewalling is handled by routers for themachinesi n question).