ZoneAlarm

[syniqal]

ZoneAlarm is a very good filewall program for Windows. It protects you from hackers and the like. ZoneLabs - the company who wrote ZoneAlarm - were recently bought by CheckPoint - the authors of one of the worst firewall programmes I have ever seen

Comments

[morti]

Useful info for ZoneAlarm users. I've been thinking though, are firewalls useful anymore? If you have direct 'net access straight from your PC then fine but if (like most of the world) you have an ADSL router it seems to make them entirely redundant since incoming connections are already blocked.

What do you reckon?

[syniqal]

ADSL routers don't protect you from things like Trojans which install themselves on your computer and then connect out. :) ZoneAlarm does.

[morti]

Fair enough. This is, I suppose, quite similar to my inisistance on sticking with Vista's UAC in case anything does get in and ask for admin privileges without my prior knowledge.

Having said that though, don't virus scanners deal with that? I'm thinking if you have a router and a virus scanner then the firewall is pointless, which just makes Windows' new built-in firewall all the more annoying. They just started including one around the time when nobody needed one. :P

[syniqal]

No, virus scanners rely on the trojan having been identified, and Zone Alarm disables the Windows Firewall completely. Incidentally, the Windows Firewall is flawed in several ways, as there are deliberate back doors built in to it. :)

An additional software firewall is always a good idea on a workstation as it gives you that extra warning that something is trying to connect in or out, allowing you to control exactly what can have internet access. Par exemple, Internet Explorer on my PC is completely blocked, preventing a lot of viruses from ever being installed since they rely on the flaws in that particular programme.