Question re quality of firewall - zonealarm

That's about as helpful as asking what the best part of a woman's body is.

snipped-for-privacy@sympatico.ca (John) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com:

Did you read the newsgroup before asking the question? That in itself would have given you much information and likely would have rendered the question moot.

All I can say is about 25% of the posts in this newsgroup are complaints of some kind about Zone Alarm in one form or another.

Just don't say it's the mouth :o)) (my woman's mouth is always yapping!)

-- Avenger© I *HATE* Spam A Spam Hater Since 1951

That would be the one which fits in best with your particular situation and which you have some chance of learning to use and configure properly, assuming you're the only person who's going to be using it. So the question is impossible to answer. If you were looking for a new car then I think you'd choose it yourself rather than relying on other people to tell you which one is the best. This may be because you already know more about cars than firewalls. I'm not saying you shouldn't take advice from other people but the best car for you depends on many things such as does it have air conditioning? Number of passenger seats required? Fuel economy? Distance travelled per year? City or rural driving? What type and size of engine? What colour? And several hundred other questions.

To have any chance of getting an answer to your question you need two things. One is someone experienced in firewalls and the other is as much information as possible about the place it's going to be used in. How many computers are in use? What applications need to communicate via the Internet? What level of experience do the users have? Is the person who needs the firewall prepared and able to learn how to use and configure it? And several hundred other questions.

Do you understand how Zonealarm works? Do you understand exactly what it does and are you able to configure it to do exactly what you want it to do? I hope that doesn't sound like I'm trying to make you feel stupid. The point is that unless you already understand what Zonealarm does then you may find it difficult to correctly configure another firewall.

Why? What is inferior about the firewall you presently have? What is in not doing that you want it to do? It may be true that a different firewall would be best but without more information it's impossible to say for sure, and there is no reason to assume that it should be a software application installed on your PC.

What results do you get from these?

I've yet to meet one person who could get Zonealarm to do exactly what they wanted it to do without any problems, and that includes myself when I tried it some time ago. Many people seem to install Zonealarm because other people tell them to. Then they get into a complete mess with the configuration but refuse to turn it off or remove it because it makes them feel more secure. In many cases they are capable of learning to configure it but either can't find the information they need or just don't want to know. I'm not saying Zonealarm isn't useful or that you shouldn't use it but it is essential to learn how to configure it.

Jason

Hi John. The question "what is the best firewall" has been ask here in this group many times. I believe there are two answers which I also read here: The one that you can learn to setup and use--correctly. The one that can best accommodate your specific needs.

There appears to be several good, free ones available. Why not try some of them out. I personally like Sygate. It does a good job. Casey