On Mon, 12 Mar 2001 at 23:32:49 -0800, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>I have @home and the first thing the technician told me was to
>get a firewall program installed right away. I asked him which
>one he recommended. He told me that he could not "recommend" one
>but that ever technician he knew was running Black Ice Defender.
>I am using that and have been very happy with it. Many say
>Zone Alarm is the best but it confused my children when they
>were trying to use the computer - plus it seemed to slow my
>system down a lot - something I have not noticed with Black Ice.

Hi Anita (and Steve)

Zone Alarm (free) is up to version 2.1.44 now. They fixed a
problem in a previous version (months ago) that could hog
resources and slow down the computer.
http://www.zdnet.com/downloads/partners/zonealarm/downloading.html
I haven't noticed any slowdown while using the latest versions
of Zone Alarm and Zone Alarm Pro.

With Zone Alarm, you choose whom you trust and put their IP
addresses in the "Local Zone" and leave the rest of the world
in the "Internet Zone". (Someone half way around the world can
be in your Local Zone; it doesn't have to be someone in your
local area network.) You should set the "Local Zone" security
level at Low (or Medium) and set the "Internet Zone" security
at High. (High security means nobody out there can even see you.)

When a program on your computer tries to access the Internet,
you are asked by Zone Alarm whether or not to let them call out.
(When you give a program permission, you can tell Zone Alarm not
to ask about that program again.) You can completely configure
Zone Alarm in a few minutes if you briefly use each of your
Internet programs (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Agent, Ping,
tracert, whois, Media Player, Weather, AIM, ICQ, ..., whatever)
so that Zone Alarm asks your permission for each. Once you do
this, Zone Alarm runs pretty much in the background. (You can
set the alert window to stay hidden and trust Zone Alarm to
block unsolicited connection attempts. You can occasionally
check the Zone Alarm log to see what's been happening.)

Black Ice (unless they've recently changed it) doesn't check
outbound connection attempts. The reason this is important is
that if you somehow end up with a Trojan on your computer, it
won't alert you like Zone Alarm does when the trojan tries to
call home. Black Ice Defender is also not free.

As you can probably tell, I really like both Zone Alarm and
Zone Alarm Pro. (I bought a 5 user license for my home
computers.) Despite what I consider to be limitations, Black Ice
is very well thought of. Other people like "Tiny Personal
Firewall" or Norton Internet Security (a combination firewall,
antivirus, and privacy program). These last two firewalls are
considered more difficult to setup *properly* since they can
require more networking knowledge on the user's part.

Regards,
Bill

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