It was discovered last week that makers of the popular free ZoneAlarm firewall software include a portion of XML code that reports back information on your internet use. I'm still searching for a good replacement, but in the meantime here's how you disable the code. The company says it will fix the "bug" soon. In the meantime you can work around it by adding:

# Block access to ZoneLabs Server
127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com
to your Windows host file.

I found this to be a pretty useful trip. Post any recommendations for ZA alternatives you might have.


Source : Betapundit

Strange, this address is to the "Loopback Adapter" and on my system blocking this disables internet access!

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

O no, I have this running...

It says the same about the 127.0.0.1 on my system and it is in the Trusted Zone.

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

Though I have not tried it, I have heard from some of my peers the Kerio Personal firewall was pretty good, though it looks like Sunbelt Software aquired it and it is no longer free.  Sygate Personal Firewall once very good and free, but Symantec bought them and discontinued it.  Now that Check Point has Zone Labs/Zone Alarm the good free ones are diappearing and offering you spyware instead.

Antonio, 127.0.0.1 should be in the trusted zone... it is a loopback address -- back to your machine... the trick is to add the line to your hosts file so traffic destined for Zonelabs is sent harmlessly back to you.

Wish there was an open source windows firewall...

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

I'm not sure about the freeware version, but I run Pro and it has 2 check boxes to disable reporting to ZA in it.....

(in reply to SithTracy)

My question is:

is it better to have on your PC the Zone Alarm instead of nothing or better unistall it? Is there any danger having it?

(in reply to MP3Mogul)

Hi people...

Antonio...my personal opinion is that if Zone Alarm otherwise WORKS (havent tried it yet so dont know how good it actually is)....then I dont see a reason to delete it...cause i believe it's still better ANY protection (even if not the best one...), than no protection at all...

And secondly...they said they will fix this "bug" soon....so I guess there is still hope for all you ZA users outthere....just dont give up and wait few more days/weeks...and hopefully things will be fixed...

Good luck!

(in reply to Antonio)

This is OK for me I think.
I also had the feeling that better have it, even this bug, than not. The security on my PC should be better with ZA I suppose.

(in reply to SiliconFreak)

As I understand it, Kerio/Sunbelt still has a free mode avaialble, the same as the feature restricted free mode in KPF4 - you might find the old 2.1.5 archived arond, but it's a bit long in the tooth.

I'd choose anything other than Zonalarm, as ZA is such a rotten cleanup job when it goes wrong - having just had to fix a friends system, where it had messed up badly and would neither work properly nor uninstall.

The ONLY thing that worked, was installing a later version, which fixed it - I'd have uninstalled the wretched thing then, if I wasn't afraid of it making another uninstall foulup.

ZA (free) offers very primitive control, as compared to Kerio or some of the lesser known ones.

http://www.firewallguide.com/software.htm - quite a lot here

(in reply to Antonio)

Zone Alarm has responded, it is not spying, nor collecting data, it is merely checking for updates.

Exerpt from Zone Labs:

"For any users who are concerned about this communication between the user’s PC and the Zone Labs servers, it is important to note that Zone Labs does not infringe upon the privacy of our customers. We don’t save personal information. We don’t do many other things that legitimate software companies do to enhance their marketing efforts, like use persistent Web cookies. This conservative approach is intentional because we take privacy extremely seriously.
"After being contacted by James Borck of Infoworld, we maintained an ongoing dialogue with him to discover the source of his issue. Initially, we were unable to reproduce it in our labs, until he submitted his log files. At that point, we were able to identify the bug and provided Mr. Borck with a temporary workaround. We never refuted his contention that an issue existed, although it did take some time to replicate it.
"The actual communication in dispute is a simple encrypted GET request that is checking to see if the user’s security software is current. We will continue to work with Mr. Borck and anyone else who might have any concerns about this issue."

(in reply to Matthew)

Went ahead and download the Sunbelt-Kerio Firewall and installed it in "Advanced Mode".  I can see why my co-workers love it.  It is an exceptional alternative to ZoneLabs/CheckPoint ZoneAlarm.  The free mode would likely serve most fine, but it is certainly more than worth $14.95 U.S. for the paid mode.

Those of you in the market for a decent software based firewall and that have a decent understanding of IP should find that Sunbelt-Kerio has an exceptional alternative to the popular ZoneAlarm.

Got a few things to learn about it because it has some pop-up blocking that prevent me from using IE @ CDRinfo's forums (have to because of the problems I have with Firefox 1.5 here).  But after a weekend of adjusting from ZoneAlarm and the ever buggy nForce Active Armor, this is a breath of fresh air.

(in reply to Matthew)

I am using for like 2years Kerio Personnal firewall, while its not very easy to setup rules (sometimes) i find it very "light" and trustworthy

(in reply to SithTracy)

Another one caused quite a lot of heat in alt.comp.freeware (newsgroup) recently...
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/

The "365 day" licence caused concern, in a newsgroup where the FAQ's go very much against anything that has taime limits, though it appears that the free licence will be renewable for as long as they continue to offer a free personal version.

There was also some consternation about a "spyware" toolbar they were associated with, though it appears that spyware tag was actually a paranoid reaction to the behaviour genuinely required for site verification  (eek! it spys on your URL's). The same way as Google toolbar is "consensual spyware" if you enable pagerank.

(in reply to emperor)

has anyone tested this personal firewall comodo software?

(in reply to Matthew)

Not me...

(in reply to emperor)