Enable firewall outbound protection in Windows 7

Windows 7 comes with a firewall built in - called Windows firewall. Unfortunately, this Windows firewall allows outbound connections by default. An outbound connection is a connection from your computer to internet. Using this default setting for outbound connection a trojan or some other malicious software can connect to internet and update itself or download more malicious programs without yuo noticing anything. But you can enable outbound protection using these steps:

1. Open Control Panel → System and Security → Windows Firewall
   
2. In the next window, click on Advanced settings on the left side, as shown in the picture below
   
3. The last step would open advanced setting for Windows' firewall window. In the main window, click on Windows Firewall Properties as shown in the picture
   
4. In the dialog that opens, select Public Profile tab and set the Outbound connections to Block as shown in the following picture. Save settings by pressing OK.
   

   Now if you launch any web browser you will notice it can not access internet. You will have to manually tell Windows that certain program is safe by creating new rule for this application.

5. To set the rules of a program manually, on the left-hand side of the panel choose Outbound Rules. You will see all Windows processes and programs that already match the rule of connecting to the internet and here is where you can add programs of your own. Click New Rule as shown in the picture below :
   
6. In the next dialog follow simple instructions to create a rule for outbound connection. Repeat procedure for all other programs you wish to grand access to internet.