The repair guy told me Sygate Firewall was spyware

And it was the cause of all my troubles with my wife's PC. I've never heard this before and I am VERY suspicious. (He also offered to sell me Norton's firewall for $50). Neither Spybot or Ad-Aware recognize it as spyware, and it is the Firewall included in V-com's System Suite 5. It's easy to set up and easy to use, I am reluctant to write this product off without getting some input from additional people with more experience than me. I hope that is the readers of this post.

Before I write this guy off as a scam artist, is there any shred of evidence that in any convoluted way could support his claim that Sygate is spyware? I am hoping he is just an opinionated nut rather than a crook.

"JunkMonkey" wrote in news:0kWNc.176907$%_6.48599@attbi_s01:

I got some swamp land in Mississippi for a real good price if you got the time to listen. ;-)

Duane :)

Write him off, in fact, shove him off the closest bridge :)

Are you asking if a standalone version of Sygate is spyware or are you speaking of V-COM's firewall, which is built on the Sygate engine?

Sygate certainly is not spyware. And I've used V-COM products and have not found them to contain spyware.

The repair guy is just trying to make a couple of bucks. Just ignore his advice.

....not to mention some prime beach-front property in Northern Mali.

OP: check if he meant Sygate (as a product) or your program that appears like it. It just might be conceivable (though unlikely) that you have some kind of spyware that masquerades as Sygate - a fine product in its own right.

I agree with the Symantec comment as for Security (as NIS), but the Norton Anti-Virus products (2004 and Corporate) are very nice and have protected many people I personally know.

Your repair guy was giving you a $50 sales pitch. My default firewall is Sygate 5.5. I also have Kerio 2.1.5 on my hard drive and only run it occasionally (simultaneously) with Sygate. The Kerio log shows Syate "calling home" only when I manually update Sygate filter signatures. If you have serious doubts about Sygate, install free Kerio and monitor it. Casey

There's a nice bridge here in London to go with the other one you have.

I've used NAV before and wasn't too impressed - it used quite a bit more ressources than for example McAfee. And I don't like the idea of a virus scanner gripping control of Port 110...

BTW, anybody read the whitepapers of the new McAfee 8.0 that is coming out in August? Seems like they're putting firewall, virusscanner and "intrusion detection" into one basket, including something that claims to be able to detect buffer overflow attempts against servers.

Juergen Nieveler

Could be. With one exception, every Symantec thing I have tried is bloated, intrusive, a resource glutton, and impossible to uninstall. Furthermore, whenever they buy a good utility, they defang it, turn it into useless bloatware, and generally screw it up (AtGuard, Norton Utilities, Quarterdeck Cleansweep, to name a few). My heart sank when they bought Powerquest. I've almost certainly seen my last good PartitionMagic.

The one exception I cited is SpeedDisk for NT, which I have installed as a standalone utility. I don't think it is available as a separate utility anymore.

It's not in London anymore. Someone else bought it and moved it to Lake Havasu City, in Arizona. :-)

Thanks to all who replied. I Thought that guy was full of crap! I'll continue to use Sygate as I found it very easy to install and set up.

I use the version of Sygate that comes with System Suite 5 on my PC. I have downloaded the free version of Sygate for my wife's PC. More to see if there was any difference between the two than any real reason. Other than the cosmetic changes required to make Sygate LOOK like the rest of SS5, I can't tell the difference functionally.

(If anyone has any questions about SS5, I like it. It uses Trend AV, Sygate Firewall, and the rest are the VCom utilities sold separately as well as in SS5. The AV has free semi-auto updates. Before , when I was using McAfee, I had to pay for a subscription for McAfee updates. All in all, it has worked well for me.)

I tried the free version of Kerio out about a year ago. I liked it, but I was happy with Sygate and couldn't justify switching especially since I would be running either in the default "no thinking" mode. If the consensus here was that Sygate was suspect, I probably would have switched to Kerio.

kick him in the ass on the way out the door...

Hi,

He may be talking about Sygate Phoning home but it is not Spyware. I tried Sygate and saw them in my NIS log and blocked them for piece of mind But I'm sure they were for Updates to the program. It's a good Firewall but I prefer a Rules based over an App Based.

Kevin

Hi Kenin. I'm not really up on my terminology but seems to me that Sygate is something of a hybrid. You have the advanced rule section where the parameters are addresses, protocols, ports, and applications. Then you have the application section where each application/service is given an allow, ask, or block. To be more restrictive on the applications, you assign remote port numbers to which each can connect (excluding all others). Casey

Yes. It is an App Based FW but it can do some Rules like a Rules based. However it is not easy to make or manage them like in a regular Rules based FW. Still Sygate is a good App Based FW with some Port Rules.

Good luck.

Kevin