Freepages-Help-L Archives

Archiver > Freepages-Help > 2001-07 > 0994100290


From: Jim Kyle <>
Subject: Re: [FreeHelp] Zone Alarm
Date: Mon, 02 Jul 2001 13:58:10 -0500
In-Reply-To: <200107021813.NAA17074@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>


At 01:13 PM 7/2/01, W. Wesley Groleau x4923 wrote:
>I'd be awfully leery of a free one--might be a trick to get access.

Wes,

Both ZoneAlarm and Tiny Personal Firewall are products of known reputable
firms, and both have higher-performance versions available to purchase. I
bought Zone Alarm Pro before discovering that it caused intermittent
lockups with my software router (I run a 5-station private network, through
a single DSL connection). Tried Tiny and haven't had a problem since. I
prefer Tiny because it offers much greater flexibility; for instance, I can
use the NetZip Download Demon from my browsers while preventing it from
reporting back to AOL what I am doing (which it normally does)...

I'm almost as paranoid as it's possible to get about system security, so I
check anything out extensively before installing it. I also run
port-scanning utilities (both Steve Gibson's packages, and the free one at
Symantec's web site) to verify that all my ports are in stealth mode except
for the FTP ports that I have to leave open so that clients can send me data.

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