When I downloaded this piece of software, it was in retaliation to the people who flood internet chatrooms. It was recommended to me by a friend who said that it would, to a certain extent, prevent this. He was right and from then on I used to survive a lot of the floods although the good users could still kick you out if they wanted to.
After a while though I started to notice that zonealarm was overruling a lot of the decisions that I was making. For instance, if I wanted to enter a site and the program didn’t like it, it would stop you from going in there. All very well and good if it may cause a problem to your system, but these were sites I had visited for a while. Not unknown sites but sites like MSN etc. Sites that millions of other people visit without problems.
This is why I’m not happy with the software. Even when I turned down the level of security etc, it still wouldn’t let me into certain sites. Now I don’t know about you but I like to be in control of my computer.
The one good thing that has come from it though is that there are so many hidden programs that run when you enter a site. Zonealarm informs you of every one and asks if you want to let it run. Even if you say no and zonealarm shuts it down, it still doesn’t mean you can’t view the site, so obviously it may have had nothing to do with it. However, you still don’t find out what the hidden program was, at least not in detail.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend it if you like to be your own computer user. This doesn’t let you do half the stuff you would normally do although if you are a regular chat room user then it could be for you.