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ZoneAlarm Phones Home

Robert Cringely of Infoworld calls ZoneAlarm a perfect spy and further writes that ZoneAlarm Security Suite has been phoning home, even when told not to.

"James Borck discovered ZA 6.0 was surreptitiously sending encrypted data back to four different servers, despite disabling all of the suite's communications options. Zone Labs denied the flaw for nearly two months, then eventually chalked it up to a "bug" in the software - even though instructions to contact the servers were set out in the program's XML code. ZoneLabs says a fix for the flaw will be coming soon and users can get around the bug by modifying their Host file settings .

As ZoneLabs suggests, to block ZoneAlarm Firewall from phoning home, add the following line to your Windows hosts file:

# Block access to ZoneLabs Server

127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com

Remember that blocking access to ZoneLab Servers would also block access to Smart Defence Advisor, AntiSpyware and Antivirus updates. "

Shneor

Reply to
Shneor
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Are there any proofs for this accusation?

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

Probably just rampant paranoia... ;)

Reply to
Kerodo

Switch to Outpost Pro. You won't miss ZAPro.

Reply to
dan

I'm doubting, that this will be better.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

I haven't heard that Outpost Pro phones home.

Reply to
dan

It installs SYSTEM services, which open Windows, just like Sygate. It opens useless and annoying popups. It makes your PC vulnerable to the SelfDoS attack. It cannot prevent "phoning home", like any other "Personal Firewall".

I don't know, if it phones home, too, like Zone Alarm Pro. Unfortunately, we didn't test this in our "Personal Firewall" test. We tested now for Zone Alarm Pro, because of the rumors here.

With all the "but Windows-Firewall cannot prevent phoning home!!!11!!1" calls here and in other places of the Net together with the technical desaster I had to face when I saw those "Personal Firewalls", I should have anticipated, that "Personal Firewalls" like Zone Alarm Pro are doing this ;-)

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

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