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