Zone Alarm firewall: do I need it if I'm behind a NAT router?

Read the article that everyone's commenting on.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed for comments on this article.

If you are looking for a good and free Firewall (the free version has some minor features disabled though), you should try Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall.

I used Zone Alarm before, but Kerio offers a better user-experience IMHO.

Also note that, like Zone Alarm, it blocks network access in both directions. The XP-firewall lacks that feature IIRC.

TRY ASHAMPOO'S FREE NEW EASY FIREWALL.

I don´t think you do Zone Alarm´s outbound protection justice. You can disable all information alerts and keep the program alerts. It has alerted me more than once to malware that was trying to ´phone home´. So it´s a blessing not a curse.

If you're getting too many alerts from Zone Alarm, tick the "remember my answer" box before Accepting/Denying. Also, in the ZA Control Centre, "Alerts & Logs", set to OFF (Do not show any informational alerts).

I love Zone Alarm. It asks you to OK a lot of programs, etc., at first. But after using it awhile, it only has to ask you whether you want to accept or reject files that would otherwise be sent to you from sites without your knowledge that they are being sent.

This is very valuable.

I almost always refuse to accept anything that I am not certain will not hurt my computer. If what I want to view at the site I am visiting will not display because it NEEDED the material that I decided not to accept, I realize what has happened, and I go back to where the spot where the program will resend the needed file or files, and this time I accept them.

Zone Alarm is great and has saved me many major headaches.

Fred Howard

I have zone alarm pro version 4.0123.012. I have certain problems as follows: Whenever a program tries to access the internet, I get an alert asking my prmission. I usually check off a box asking it to remember my answer. Recently it began to "forgret" and ask me for certain programs over and over. Then it got real bad and the whole database erased each reboot. I did a search and on a user forum was told to reboot and delete certain files. Then reinstall the program in safe mode. The reason was that these files were likely corrupted. I did this, and it's a lot better, but I still forgets some, but not all programs. This is liveable, but annoying.

Michael J. Yaros

1. Well as first, regarding the other free firewall alternatives beside Zone Alarm (and beside the mentioned Sunbelt Kerio Personal firewall), I would also recommend trying the Sygate firewall. Oh and btw. I also used Kerio firewall back then for some time, but it was still the old "non-Sunbelt" version.

2. As second, regarding the "outbound protection"; you see, many people argue (especially on Ars Technica forum that I frequently visit/participate on it) that the outbound traffic monitoring firewalls are more or less useless, since once the malware is on your computer you are already owned and that the malware could in turn turn-off your firewall and disable the Windows "Security Center" altogether. If you want to, see the recent "Do we need an outbound traffic monitoring firewall ??" thread: http://www.castlecops.com/postitle165221-0-0-.html that I opened on CastleCops forum about this.

3. And as third, regarding the Zone Alarm that doesn't remember the setting for a particular program (btw., I don't use the program anymore); in my opinion one of the reasons might be that the program is launched from different locations (for instance TEMP sub-directories), and the other one being the possibility that the "database" was corrupted (as already mentioned by the poster above), which actually doesn't occur so rarely at all in Zone Alarm's case. If I recall correctly the "database" is a common .xml file (or two .xml files) that you need to delete along with logs' folder, and after that reboot to start "fresh".

P.S. -- I would also recommend searching Zonelabs site for older non-bloated versions of Zone Alarm firewall that were certainly more resources-friendly and stable in general !!

________

best regards,
Ivan Tadej, Slovenija, EU
http://www.tadej-ivan.be/

I learned the hard way that Zone Alarm could NOT be overwritten (address redirected),(by malware, etc.). Norton can. I have nothing but praise for my Zone Alarm free firewall. Sure, it has it's quirks but for a lower level computer user like me, well, It's worth it's weight in gold. VIC

in my co there are 50 comp's all is having win2000 and winxp, the problem is when we access a programm2 from data server it is database programme and all the machine is accessing from the data server and when we access it its running very slow what could be the problem please help me it is urgent.

thanks

sanjay

Ask leo is an excellent help.Regarding Zone Alarm, I have been using it for years and have had no problems. I recently went wireless and have a 192..168 address when i look at the DOS prompt as suggested.Ian Gizmo Richards has recently said he is going to change over to Comodo Firewall early 2007. This is a free programme and comes well recommended, a friend of mine who is very particular and a born sceptic recommends it highly as well.I would think that Gizmos recommendation alone should carry a lot of weight, as, like leo, he is ultra well experienced and informed.Hope this helps.

To post a comment on "Zone Alarm firewall: do I need it if I'm behind a NAT router?", please return to that article's main page.