ZoneAlarm

[AlexPBaston]

Well, recently, I downloaded ZoneAlarm from Zone Labs (http://www.zonelabs.com) and I was very pleased with it's firewall abilities. Very nice piece of software, with many, many options availiable for use with it.

Good stuff

[Info_Au]

I have been running Zonealarm since it was advertised on Antionline news page..
Think its total count of crashes or failures stands @ 8 now.(thats not many in time frame)
Until recently i have liked it in everyway..But since now i need to use A.I.M to chat to some friends from here(I.R.C Gone :()It has crashed Zonealarm 3 times in last 2 days..
I read that topic on Zips appearing when "a.i.m" had crashed on somebody but nothing like that has shown up so i just take it A.I.M needs to be configured to a port and will work on that part....

OVERALL..ZONEALARM Is O.K

"Hog" cant get past it!!:cool: Just yet??

[hogfly]

no...not yet. :cuss:


AIM doesn't always cause problems....for some people it works fine(like me) others have mounds of problems with it.

[limp1058]

I also have zone alarm, and very much enjoy what it doing. I have been protected against netbios attacks as well as DoS attacks at my HTTP. I have had very very Few problems with the program crashing and would reccomend it to anyone thats needs a good free firewall, espeacially to newbies

[BRISTOLJACK]

I had many problems with zone alarm and could never find out why,so I erased it.
It's clearly that it's a good product though,for many users.

[Quandasar]

I agree with you guys zonealarm is an excellent product and it is free what more could one want...

The only problem i have had with it is whn i go to irc , then i have to lower the security settings to medium until it gets connected and then i can raise it up again.

[limp1058]

It's free and it works, I mean i've never had that problem with IRC, I mean i can get on the antionline icr chat and still have it set at high security

[ivan37]

Quandasar: what IRC program are you using?

[Quandasar]

I am using IrcN the newest version , i dont remember the release numer though ...
Any ideas ?

[ivan37]

I just d/led IrcN and it worked fine for me...very strange - couldn't find anything on ZoneAlarm's site nor anywhere else on the internet.

[thesmileyone]

I've never really used another firewall except for Zonealarm. What other firewalls do people recommend? How do they compare to Zonealarm?

[BRISTOLJACK]

Norton internet security 2001-version 3 is good and also includes a antivirus as well.

[Negative]

Steve Gibson from GRC (http://grc.com/lt/scoreboard.htm) rated most firewalls by using his Leak Test utility.

Conclusion: McAfee, Norton, ZoneAlarm, Tiny Personal Firewall are all safe, with a few remarks. ZoneAlarm seems to win because it's free, and easy to use. TPF also is free, but rather for the technically oriented.

I'd say: if your Win-system passes the Leaktest and the Port Probe (try it out on www.grc.com (http://www.grc.com) ), you're pretty safe.

[Quandasar]

Thanks for trying , It is probably some option in the advanced tab,
i just havent bothered to fiddle with it, this is a minor conflict and besides i dont go to irc often.

When i was running Win98Se i had to shut down zonealarm completly so that irc would work , but after i installed win2K the above problem appeared, i dunno weather it is the OS or the update of zonealarm that i got after i installed Win2K

[limp1058]

Well I have been using IRC a lot more lately and noticed that if i et the IRC load for about 5 min on my56k it finally loads, so i gave up and got mIRC and that works just fine to conflicts with zonealarm

[scab]

:eek: Yes Zone Alarm is a great tool and it's better because it is free but like everything else there are ways around it, in my example a simple trojan that I had gotton from an e=mail had gone to my registery and uninstalled zone alarm. It did it so fast that I didn't know what happened one minute it was sitting there on my toolbar and the next it dissapered.

The trojan had gone to the registry and uninstalled the program.
taking down the firewall and trying to notify the person who sent the trojan by e-mail to let that person know that I had no firewall up.

[ivan37]

Yes. ZoneAlarm can be taken down - But only if you run a trojan or whatever that will take it down. It isn't just ZoneAlarm, though - any program including other firewall progs can be taken down in a similar way.

Nowadays just an antivirus program isn't enough and just a firewall isn't enough. You need both.

[plv]

Actually, I use ZoneAlarm Pro and BlackIce together. They interoperate nicely and have protected me from SirCam, CodeRed and a number of other nasties. Of course I also use Norton Antivirus in active mode (it scans email downloads as well).

[BRISTOLJACK]

What are the advantages of zone and BiD together?

[Negative]

What are the advantages of zone and BiD together?
Kills paranoia...

[BRISTOLJACK]

Originally posted by Negative

Kills paranoia...
What else?:confused:

[plv]

BlackIce Defender is primarily an IDS (Intrusion Detection System) tool. It prevents certain attacks and notifies you of scans, etc. It can also be used to block certain types of attacks from the outside, shut down NetBIOS, etc. It also does a reverse lookup to give you NetBIOS and DNS information on attackers. It also can be set to automatically block sites which are attacking you.

ZoneAlarm Pro scans mail and changes potentially dangerous extensions in attachments. It also blocks attacks from the outside. It has two separate settings for local networks (which you define) and the internet (basically anything else). It controls which programs on your machine can access local or internet as client or server (selectively), which has the helpful side effect of disabling DDOS tools that might have arrived on your system: you will see the attempted access and can stop it. Lastly, when you allow a program to have access, it computes a checksum which makes it unlikely that someone can substitute say SubSeven for ieplore.exe. This can be turned off for selected programs (e.g. Microsoft applications) which will frequently be altered by patches and updates, if you choose.

Between the two, you can lock the machine down pretty tight, but still have all the flexibility you need.

[Terr]

I'd really recommend Tiny Personal Firewall, it has application-based rules, as well as address-based rules, and it's pretty easy to use if you know what you're doing. There are a few minor bugs, such as accidentally locking myself out when enabling remote administration (though how, I do not know. It was easy to fix.)... But overall I find it about all you need for a home-user. Less idiot-proof than Zonealarm, but very comprehensive.

[BRISTOLJACK]

:cool: Thanks for the info about zpro and BiD,I'm always open to advice and experience.

[Raditz]

Zonealarm is the best windows firewall in my opinion, it'll slow crackers down enough to discourage them.