Every since I reloaded the OS on my Nextel 7520 I can no longer change the Firewall setting. It is Enabled and gives me no option to change it. Before I wiped the unit and reloaded the OS I had the ability to Enable or Disable it. Can anyone shed any light on what I need to do to get this option back?

Thanks!

Are you registered on a BES? Or it may be Nextel's new BWC...

The BES (and maybe the newer BWC 4.0) can remotely force this setting to be enabled...

Just curious, but what exactly does the firewall do on a blackberry. I see the option on my 7100g and it was turned off by default. I didn't want to mess anything up, so I left it alone. I understand what a firewall does on a computer, and I'm guessing it's similar on a blackberry, but is it really necessary? And is there any downside to turning it on?

A firewall is very useful on BlackBerry for high security environments, because BlackBerry uses government-quality security. (Encryption, etc).

Firewall is mainly used to authorize/de-authorize outgoing connections from third party networking applications, such as Verichat, WebMessenger, Reqwireless, etc. You get prompted whenever an outgoing connection is made for the first time from a 3rd party application.

Security Tidbit Facts: In fact, it's possible for BES users to remotely kill their BlackBerries when they are stolen. A password can be forced to be entered into the BlackBerry every 15 minutes too -- and if the wrong password is entered 10 times, the BlackBerry destroys the contents of its memory (lobotomy feature). There are signed API's which means you can't write a program that intentionally reads the addressbook, without that $100 signing key from RIM. Nearly impossible to write a virus for BlackBerry... And attempting to disassemble a BlackBerry and reading the flash chips directly, just yields useless encrypted data if you don't have the password. (Content Protection must be enabled in Options->Security) ... Even CIA was impressed at the BlackBerry security.