I am trying to tackle a networking project and need a little advice.

I am using a program that receives a continuous stream of data via the internet for several hours a day and so requires an active internet connection during those hours. The program displays the information on a graph as the data arrives. The same program allows me to statistically analyse the data. My main concern is that I cannot be sure that the program isn’t surreptitiously sharing my statistical analysis with the developers of the program or the third party that provides the data. In other words, the program could be engineered to take advantage of its constant access to the internet and participate in some sort of data-mining without my knowledge.

The obvious solution is a firewall, but the difficulty is that because the program has to have both inbound and outbound access to the internet, I would have to know exactly what information to block and what information to allow.

After some research on this, I found out about packet sniffing and used Wireshark to look at the data that the program sends and receives. The parts I can understand seem innocent enough, such as my username and password required to log into the data service. But there seems to be some traffic that is somehow encoded.

I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the best way to ensure absolute security is by using a network. Here is my laymen’s explanation of what I hope to achieve.

Instead of using just one computer, a network of two computers will be used.

The first computer will have a copy of the program on it and will have complete access the internet.

The data that is received via the internet in the first computer will somehow be forwarded onto a second computer.

The second computer will also have a copy of the program on it but will have no connection to the internet and will only receive the data forwarded to it by the first computer.

What would be the simplest way to proceed with implementing such a two-computer strategy? Or, is there a single-computer strategy that would ensure an equal level of security?

Many thanks,

--John