So you've jumped on the band-wagon and gotten yourself a highspeed internet connection; give yourself a pat on the back. What? You don't have firewall protection; give yourself a slap on the wrist. "But, why do I need a firewall?" you may ask. Well, ask yourself this:

Would you take out an ad in the newspaper listing your home address, and then leave your doors unlocked and windows wide open with the assumption that noone would ever break in? Unless you're trying to pull an insurance scam, I'm assuming the answer is "No, don't be silly!"

Well, for the same reason that you lock your doors and install a security alarm in your house, you should protect your computer as well. Otherwise, you're pretty much a sitting duck with a big red bullseye on your back. Don't think you're vulnerable to a hack attack? Well, you are. In fact, while you're reading this review, some hacker with malicious intent is probably probing your computer's ports right now. Even scarier than that are the programs running on your computer that are accessing the internet without your knowledge or permission, and sending information about your surfing habits back to their servers (ex: many popular download manager programs like Gozilla).

Feel violated yet? Well you should.

Enter Zone Alarm, hailed by some as the best firewall protection around, and it's FREE for personal use (for business use you have to pay). Zone Alarm monitors your computer's internet activity according to the level of security that you set it to, and will alert you (if configured to do so) whenever someone tries to access your computer, or a non-authorized program attempts to access the internet; all alerts are also saved on a log file. You can specify which programs are always allowed to access the internet, which need to ask permission each time, and which are never allowed. Zone Alarm can also automatically halt all internet activity when you've been away from the computer for a specified length of time, or when your screensaver activates.

A handy feature that was originally in Zone Alarm is that whenever it detected a probe on your computer, it allowed you to use a "Who Is" database to identify the source of the probe; however, this feature is now only included with the pro version, but there are still many websites that allow you to type in the IP address of the probe to find out who it is registered to. Many times it might just be the server of a website you visited checking to see if you're still connected, but other times it's not. Another feature is that ZA let's you know if a program that is accessing the internet has changed in any way. This can come in handy because unless you've updated such a program (either manually, or if the program has an auto-update feature) it could be an indication that a virus--or other malicious program--is trying to pass itself off as a legit program.

I was originally operating Zone Alarm on a Celeron 300 w/ 160MB RAM and Win 98 OS. I have recently tried Zone Alarm on an IBM Thinkpad with 933Mhz, 256MB RAM, running Windows 2000. As of yet, I have received no complications (i.e crashes) as a result of the installation, and it's been working like a charm. It's even working with my peer-to-peer (P2P) programs like Morpheus and ICQ, because you can set Zone Alarm to allow a certain program to act as a server if it needs to.

How Does Zone Alarm stop hacks?
Basically, when a probe is sent to your computer, Zone Alarm intercepts it and does not send a reply. So to the rest of the world, your computer doesn't even exist! You are now in stealth mode!

From the first moment that I installed Zone Alarm, I was alerted to the barrage of probes on my computer, and I then realized how many "sneaky" programs were trying to send info on the net when they had no business doing so.

If you want to see how vulnerable you are to probing, visit www.grc.com where you can have your ports and your existing firewall tested for vulnerabilities. My suggestion is that you try Zone Alarm, and that you test your shields with and without the firewall to see the difference. In fact, it was initially claimed that Zone Alarm is currently the only firewall that fully protects the user from probes and does not allow any leaks; however many other firewall programs have since released patches for this problem.

The latest download (V 2.6) is only 2.76 MB and is compatible with Windows XP (there also doesn't seem to be any conflicts with XP's built in firewall, which only does half the job of Zone Alarm). This program is a must have (whether or not you have constant internet access) and you can't beat the price ($0)!



Recommended: Yes