Laurence writes:

<<i recently worked on =
a computer that ran zone alarm, but had no anti virus program.
is the computer safe from virus attacks or should the computer's owner =
have some further virus protection?>>

Yes. A common mistake is to confuse the functions of a firewall with an
antivirus prog. They are two entirely different things.

It's unfortunate that ZA adds to this confusion by saying that it protects
against viruses. This can only be in a very general non-specific
way--probably by heuristic searching, ie it may identify files that look as
if they might carry viruses of a general nature. But it doesn't have a
specific virus database and so should not be relied upon for protection.
That is not the primary function of a firewall.

All proper antivirus progs have downloadable databases in which they keep
the identifying data of all known viruses. So they are very specific and
must be constantly kept up to date.

Don Penlington
 From the beach at Surfers Paradise.
http://www.geocities.com/donaldpen/
for sunny Queensland photos, fractal art, free computer tutorials, and more.
(Sorry, this site is down at the moment).

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