Overview of the ZoneAlarm Firewall
Protect your financial
information from hackers and data thieves
ZoneAlarm protects you, your computer, and your personal
information from destructive hackers, data thieves, malicious
email attachments, worms, and other emerging Internet threats.
There have
been 34,788,844 downloads of ZoneAlarm Firewall software.
A summary of
firewall reviews of ZoneAlarm
Download.com
Editor's rating: 5* (out of 5 possible)
Average user rating: 4.5* (out of 5 possible) (116 votes)
Download.com review of ZoneAlarm
"An effective
and easy-to-use firewall program, ZoneAlarm does a great job
of keeping your PC safe from a variety of threats.
ZoneAlarm Firewall makes configuring a firewall, which sounds like a
daunting task to the majority of computer users, incredibly
easy with a wizard. Maintaining and updating settings
also is a snap when you're using the stylish interface and
its simple slider controls. The program's Zones feature also
allows you to assign different security levels for a local
network and for the Internet. We found ZoneAlarm very good
at recognizing and automatically including settings for our
local network. In all our tests, the firewall guarded
against all external and internal threats it encountered.
Therefore, we think ZoneAlarm is an excellent firewall
choice for just about any average user."
Epinions
review.
Overall
rating: 4.5 stars out of 5. Reviewed by 131 Epinions users.
Also there are
plenty of other positive reviews... including good reviews
from PCWorld, Cnet, Zdnet, and so forth.
Pretty much just
stick with the pre-set, DEFAULT settings.
As with most
other software, acclimate yourself with it. Go through
the menus and tabs... skim through it. Give it a once
over.
Let's look at the main window of
ZoneAlarm.
This is pretty much the only screen you need to deal with (if
at all!).
To access it, double click the
ZA
icon (it rests in the lower right corner of your computer,
left of your clock).
Take a look at
the tabs on the far left of this particular screen (spanning from Overview down to
Alerts & Logs). Here are just the key features, in
brief.
Overview tab
Preferences
General
heading
-Load ZoneAlarm Pro at startup. I think you should keep this
box checked.
-Protect the ZoneAlarm Pro client. Keep it checked.
Contact
with Zone Labs heading
-Hide my IP address when applicable. I keep it checked.
Firewall TAB
Internet Zone Security heading. I keep it at high.
Trusted Zone Security. I keep it at medium. That's the default
setting. But high could work. If you do so, and have any issues, just
lower it back to High.
Program Control
I stick with the default
settings (Program Control set
to Med. Alert Advisor set to Auto. Automatic Lock off.).
Antivurus monitoring. Monitoring On. (Default).
*If you do not have virus software, seriously consider getting
it. McAfee is a good one. I have used them for years.
We'll talk about it in another issue.
E-mail Protection. Default On position.
ID Lock. I never mess with it.
Alerts & Logs
Alert Events
Shown. Default (medium). Event logging on.
Program logging on.
Start Message
After you
install ZoneAlarm, you'll notice
that you'll keep getting a message (lower right hand corner of
your screen) popping up. You can just click "Accept" and "Remember setting".
Pretty soon those messages will stop coming up.
Subscribers to our ezine
are provided with computer security and privacy software
(firewall software) at no charge.
The only issue I have ever
encountered with ZoneAlarm (and it was a MINOR one) was that the ZoneAlarm
firewall would sometimes make it so I couldn't access the
internet unless I turned ZoneAlarm off.
I'd be online then switch
over to another software for awhile (for example, I'd use
my MS Word program). Then I'd come back to the internet and
find that I couldn't surf. I would type in a web site. Get nothing.
Well, actually, I'd get one of those ugly error pages. I'd hit
refresh... still nothing.
If you encounter this
issue, the easy answer is to
turn ZoneAlarm off. Then you can access the
internet immediately.
Or, just re-boot the computer.
... BUT,
you won't be protected if you turn ZoneAlarm off...
But here's a better and permanent
solution...
The
solution...
If you have this
problem (it
will seem like you've been logged off the internet...and you
can't access any sites),
try this:
Double click on the
ZoneAlarm icon (lower right of your computer).
Look at the bottom
left of the ZoneAlarm screen for "Alerts & Logs". Click it.
Go to the "Log viewer"
(far right) tab. You'll see that the first column is
"Rating". Highlight one of the
rows. Then click the button called "Add to Zone" (which is
located at the lower right of the screen).
Then exit out of
the ZoneAlarm screen. Try typing in a web site and
see if you can access the web.
If that doesn't work,
repeat the above stated steps. When you get to the
Log viewer tab try highlighting a DIFFERENT row that has a
different Protocol (see under the column Protocol). Then
click "Add to Zone".
If that doesn't
work, just shutdown ZoneAlarm.
Or, reboot your
computer.
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