Zonealarm

Look at the test results from many antivirustesters. What's wrong with that?
But do whatever you want, I stop with comments on this subject.

 

I am telling you now don't get the old man's nose open, because he is
sick in the head, and he doesn't have anything going on in his,
otherwise, old, lonely and loony tune life but Usenet. He is some kind
of kin to Ringmaster Albright. He is just out here attacking people for
no apparent reason, with a lot of lip dribble service. At least with
Ringmaster, he has a mission statement of get Frank, get Microsoft and
get anyone that talks pro on Microsoft, while old man Montgomery is just
loosy as a goosy and out here.

 

I am neither complaining nor requiring help. I migrated to free AV
after having used paid-for products in the past. None of the ones
I have used has ever caught malware except Norton 5.0 - which
caught kakworm coming from a microsoft helpdesk after I had
already applied the scriptlet typelib / eyedog patch.

I don't think it is a bad thing to pay for software, and I believe the
free ones are adequate for my low risk data. People with high
value (and hence high risk) data should get payware and make use
of the support it helps pay for.

 

The methods to disable the nag screen and the splash screen work.

 

When asked whose ass he pulled that one out of, he replied:

Didn't cite any, because there aren't any that call Avast "not so
safe".

DDW

 

I cannot figure out what that built-in Vista FW is good for.
All incoming connections are blocked by the router anyway,
and, I heard, that software FW are not as secure as hardware.
But what I really need is control over outgoing connections.
I hate when applications connect to the Web behind my back,
gobble up my net bandwidth, report on my usage patterns,
download and install upgrades without my approval, etc.
So, I used ZoneAlarm for years, but, alas, it is not available
on Vista 64. For now I switched to Comodo. It is much harder
to configure, but appears to be more flexible.

 

Makes sense for a laptop - where you might not
always be behind *your* router - or I suppose
a desktop setup when *your* router isn't *yours*
anymore due to intrusion.

More a want than a need. Outgoing connections come
from software already executing on the machine you
are "protecting" - this is not really a firewall's function.

 

Well, if they managed to hijack your router, then all is los
and software FW will not help either (neither built-in nor thir
party)

But, as I already said, my problem is not with viruse
(the last time I had a real damage from a virus was back in 92)
but with "legitimate" software, such as Acrobat reader
Media player and many others, which connect to Interne
behind my back without my permission and send who-knows-wha
about me to their headquarters. For that reason I never run
a PC without outgoing firewall, which significantly improve
my network connection speed by blocking unwanted connections. It woul
be nice if MS will build outgoing FW
into the Windows and protect it from being disable
the same way as MS protects Vista internal modules fro
being overwritten. Until then I have to rely on third party solutions

 

Why do you say that? Just because they have your
router does not mean they have your computer too.
That's a good part of what makes a router a firewall.

Of course not, we were talking about the usefulness of
Windows Firewall if a *real* firewall in the form of a
router was also used. Viruses are not really a firewall
issue - but a network worm may well be thwarted by
the presence of the Windows Firewall in case you find
yourself no longer shielded by the router or other true
firewall appliance.

Hmmm...okay... yeah, some people are real sensitive
about that sort of thing.

[snip]

 

Well, I am not an expert. My thought was that in order t
reconfigure my router someone should get access to th
password, which is only possible by hijacking my P
or getting a physical access to both. But if they hijacke
my PC, then they also compromised my software firewal
as well, which is much easier to do than to record a passwor
for the router. Of course, I ignored the fact that a route
may be buggy and intruder may take advantage of it
But I didn't hear so far about intruders attacking hom
routers, while there is endless stream of attacks on home PCs

The original question was whether one still needs a third part
firewall in Vista. So, I just tried to explain why I still need one

I guess that most of the people simply not aware why thei
PCs (and Web browsers) keep slowing down to a crawl
I have dozens of programs installed and most of them are tryin
to check for updates and download huge files behind my back
install them and reboot my PC - all the time interfering wit
my work. I just cannot use PC without an outgoing firewall anymore

 

Generally, routers still have the default user and password.

Mine was user and user.
My neighbors was (okay..still is) user and admin.

http://www.routerpasswords.com/

I was refering to your first contribution, not the original
post for the thread,

You said in part:

"I cannot figure out what that built-in Vista FW is good for.
All incoming connections are blocked by the router anyway,
and, I heard, that software FW are not as secure as hardware."

Which is correct.

What the software firewall is good for is when you find
yourself *not* behind a real firewall for whatever reasons.

Outbound sniffing and filtering would be better applied in an
environment that is not the same environment as that that is
being "protected" by such filtering. It goes for inbound too.

As you said - "...software FW are not as secure as hardware."

Application control and internet access control are nice, but
are not a good security move because malware will be written
to tunnel within the programs that are allowed access. Your
filter software won't alert to them and you will think it is not
happening. So - you will end up in the same situation with the
added overhead of the filtering software running and finding
nothing.

 

change the router password, then built-in Vista FW would give som
protection

I already wrote that my biggest problem is not with viruse
but with "legitimate" apps, such as Acrobat, WMP, iTunes, etc
which manage to slow down my PC and Web connection
almost to a halt. Luckily, these apps are not so deviou
and do not perform any tunneling

but my feeling is that my PC is running faster with an outboun
FW - at least CPU and network activity indicators do go dow
each time I block a third party app from connecting

 

My broadband cable provider's setup instructions make no
mention of passwords or usernames. I believe that to be the
normal situation. If so, there are many people out there that
fit into your "so lazy" category. I suppose those laptop users
that are too lazy to drag around their personal router/firewall
could also benefit from what you call "built-in Vista FW"?

Nobody, why do you ask? I will say that firewalls *are* for
security and not just 'nice to have' functionality. The features
that became associated with firewalls have become computer
hosted applications that attempt to mimic true firewalls. The
features are okay, but shouldn't be confused with what a real
firewall is.

Again, viruses are not addressed by firewalls. Lets not talk
about viruses. I did mention malware though - I suppose that
having unwanted actions by legitimate programs monitored is
a good enough reason for such features as internet access
control. You may not want consent.exe to access the internet
just as you are typing your credentials into the box. But it is
not a firewall thing. It's like saying one word processor is
better than another because it plays music while you type.

By all means use outbound filtering - especially when you feel
such benefit from it. But it is a shame to have to trade the FW
that came with Vista away just because of that feature. What
Zonealarm should do is make an outbound filtering application
that *isn't* glued to their firewall so that users can keep the
Windows Firewall *and* have the features from Zonealarm
if they value them.

A feeling is good enough for me - benchmarking is overrated. )

If you can set your router firewall up for logging, see how often
Zonealarm phones home. Does it phone home more often than
the major offender of your legitimate irritations? Block one -
send two of its own?