One thing most people assume is that a firewall protects ur pc only from inbound connections. Think again. Yes a firewall does protect u from inbound intrusion attempts, but it also prevents some programs from ur pc to connect to the net. And zone alarm is very good at it.
One of the many excellent softwares form zonelabs, zone alarm does what it says it will do. Installation is simple. I wudnt say that about the usage though. More on this later in the review.
When set up on ur pc, it immediately swings into action. For example when u connect to the net and open any website, it will warn u that ur browser ( I assume u use firefox ) is trying to connect to the internet. This is a perfect example of an outbound access attempt. Of course, u have to click yes. Other such programs such as windows media player and even winamp or any other when started will try to access the internet. The reason is simple. To put in simple words, they simply register a ’ping’ on their website, so that the count of the number of the users using that particular program increases. Of course, if u designed a software, wudnt u want more people to use it?
This is a problem for dialup users though. If u allow such software to connect to the net, they take up ur bandwidth, not exactly a bad point. And yes the good ol winamp will also ask ur permission as well. With zone labs u can decide which program shud access the net and which shud not. U can do this by clicking on allow or deny when the outbound access warning baloon pops up. Zone labs merely stops a program in its tracks when it attempts to connect and u have the final judgement. More like a gatekeeper and a very good one too ! Inbound attempts are also stopped. As of now, ZA shows me that 27999 inbound attempts have been stopped, 1168 of them have been rated as high. A point to note here is that not all inbound access attempts are dangerous, but a few of them are.
One con in ZA is the complexity. Though it offers some help on unknown programs, some first time users just dont know which program has to be allowed and which not. For example if u dont allow windows automatic updates to connect to the net, u will never get crucial updates !
But they say, something is better than nothing. Once u get used to it, u never need to bother about intrusion attempts. And yes, u can alter the access of programs later, like changing deny to allow, later on.
A very good software, a must for anyone who is interested in keeping thier pc safe.