First things first:

2.  ZoneAlarm is an excellent firewall.

1a.  You're going to get a lot of different opinions on this one.  When I
first installed ZA I had a dial-up connection, and I configured ZA to inform
me every time there was an attempt at an intrusion.  There were MANY.  They
were almost invariably from domains registered to porn sites or popular music
sites run by teenagers, and were probably related to previous users' use of
the same IP (dynamic).  It's hard to imagine that these sites had any innocent
reason for contacting the machine of someone who had previously logged on to
their site.
1b.  ZoneAlarm is also good for monitoring the behavior of spyware which you
may have installed on your system, even without realizing it.  I discovered
that a spyware program which I had uninstalled 'completely' had left its
spyware elements, WHICH WERE STILL TRANSMITTING information from my machine to
a server months later.  Probably harmless, but eery.  ZA will also allow you
to leave spyware on your system, and at least make sure that it can only
transmit when you've specifically given it permission to.

>If I use a modem to go on the Internet, do I need a Firewall?  Is Zone
>Alarm good?

Thank you.
David Jonathan Justman.

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