Cable does put you on a wide-area network, but there are strong firewalls you can put onto your computer (both hardware and software.) We have MacAfee. If you have it on the highest security, you have to "train" it which sites to accept freely thru the firewall. So for awhile you'll be getting a screen that fairly shouts, warning! Something wants access! There have been more than a few suspicious bits of programs that I denied access to, so it works.