I first heard about ZoneAlarm a few months ago after finding out that my PC was infested with multiple spyware programs. Before getting ZoneAlarm, I never realised how many people are making contact with your computer all the time while you are online, whether simply checking that you're there or trying to hack into your system.

Basically, ZoneAlarm is a personal 'firewall', which is an application that prevents any organisation or person from entering your computer and invading your privacy. This in effect makes your computer 'invisible' to every other computer in the world.

The free downloadable version of ZoneAlarm provides plenty of options, including letting you change the levels of security for local and internet access; the ability to choose what programs can access the internet; 'MailSafe', which protects you from e-mail viruses and much more. You can also configure it to load on startup, check regularly for updates and keep logs of any attempts made by anybody else on the net to access your computer.

Recommended: Yes