Zone Alarm
 

I've just installed Zone Alarm on my PC's at home, and as it triggered three times in the first 5 minutes after install I'm rather glad I did. However, I vaguely remember some criticism of it from somewhere, quite possible here - anyone know how good it actually is??

Oh, and what can I (legally) do to that *****er at 213.180.65.77 (aka shell.vegasys.com, whoever he/she/it is) who has scanned me half a dozen times in the last minute? Knowing it is happening means that it is starting to irritate me....

Send me the log and I'll take a look at it before you start shooting from the hip.

B

Firstly, Evo7, well done for getting a firewall of any description. It's amazing how much traffic there is out there trying to find Trojan Horses and the like.

These guys are almost certainly not after you; they're just scanning a range of IP addresses and usually do it in bursts of even numbers such as 4, 6 or 8 tries. I've has as many as 200 from one originator in one session lasting about 2 minutes. The situation has got much worse in recent months. And it'll probably get a lot worse yet. Firewalls are the "in thing".

Relax and enjoy the protection. Above all, don't take it personally and react. They all go away and others take their place.

BTW, I use BlackIce (not free); it seems watertight and GRC.com can't find his way into my PC whenever I do a check.

You may already know this, but if you are using Zone Alarm and want to find out where the enquiry came from, use: http://www.bankes.com/nslookup.htm

Hope this is of use
Regards
Brian

The usual advice from the professionals is to turn off the logging. Then you don't see this stuff and don't worry about it. There's nothing much you can do anyway (and most of it is actually completely harmless).

I've invested inthe PRO version of Zone Alarm, It provides an automatic lookup facility. Furthermore, it also provides e-mail protection. I'm still reveiving about 5 copies of the Sircam Virus daily, and Zone Alarm Pro automatically changes the file tag from .com or .exe to something meaningless like .zl3, hence preventing me from accidently activating the Virus program.

Thanks chaps.

After a couple of hours online the novelty of being port scanned constantly has worn off, and I've taken Gertrude's advice and just turned the notification off. http://grc.com/ cannot see me anymore - last time it greeted me by name, thanks to NetBIOS I guess, so that's an improvement. I've upgraded to the PRO version anyway - doesn't cost much and seems worth the money.

Hamrah - just out of curiosity, what is an EADI??? Been wondering ever since it was revealed that you didn't know... :)

Any free firewalls around?
Not that I'm cheap of course, it's just that I'm, well, cheap. :D

Zone Alarm is free...