Yes...I use Shield's Up regularly :) I've probably probed my ports more times than I've ..ohh..nevermind. lol
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Yes...I use Shield's Up regularly :) I've probably probed my ports more times than I've ..ohh..nevermind. lol
I don't wanna know...Or do I?...Maybe...oh well...
medium rare? LOL.......
hey nobody says it's perfect but lisa2k has guts!
hmmm a fighter for justice and hmmm perhaps pizza with toppings?
so when can the gang come over for a cookout?
You're okay in my book!
mach
Actually...I think a more appropriate answer to the roast would have been well "done" :P... You're also ok in my book, Mach *aka Jeff*...as long as you don't penetrate my most sensitive areas...oh wait..LOL
OK..this is a computer technical forum. I need to redirect my focus back to ZA, Sygate etc.....but forget Tiny Personal..hehe
I just spent the last 20 minutes reading through this thread and just wanted to thank Lisa for posting it. I just downloaded ZA older version 2.6, which I had before but couldn't find my cd with it on there. So thanks Lisa. ;)
I believe it's version 2.6.88 I have downloaded the 3.7 version but waiting for system to backup a couple of times to try.
<[email protected]>
lisa? I was tempted to fry you on the mach2 show but just too tired today.
BTW.. I got a great deal on my auto insurance yesterday!! on the talking gecco.
:D mach
perhaps the lisa2k show? with monster?
I'll sell him cheap.. just eat killowatts. cherieos, oxygen, databases.. needs big shoes sizes.
:D mach
My pleasure, photolady :) It's always great to get opinions and links to software that will or has worked perfectly for you in the past/present/future.
Lisa2k:
Felt that I should add my concise "two cents worth" on software firewalls. Because, over about the last three years+, I have used two versions of ZA free, NIS, Kerio (or "KPF"), and Agnitum Outpost. Now "I ain't no expert", but I do have some fairly in-depth experience with these firewalls, I have done what I feel is fairly extensive research on all available software firewalls, and as a result I do have some reasonably subjective opinions on this issue that may be beneficial for you, and for anyone else that eventually comes along and ponders this thread. Again, I will attempt to be brief here, just outlining experiences and expressing personal conclusions, nothing "scientific", and always consider the fact that what works wonderfully for one individual on one system may be problematic for another individual on another system (or for the same person on a different system, etc…), but that if you look around enough on various forums and you see about the same conclusions (intuitively "weeding out" those "opinions" that seem to be shall we say biased), then you may get a better perspective on the reality of the situation. Good luck.
Ok, on my first firewall, ZA free, version 2-something. Being a noobie, it seemed to work fine for a long time, although in retro I now realize that (to me, even with a fairly high end machine) it was very resource intensive (nice way to say "hog"), drastically extended start up and shut down times, and picked up/logged waaaay too much 'net noise as "alerts". The end of ZA for me was when they offered me a "free upgrade", I took the bait, immediately experienced consistent disconnects, and ZA's only solution was to purchase the pro version. Yeh, could have went back to the "old version", but "it's the principal of the thing". THEN, a nightmare - unknowingly, I proceeded to uninstall ZA in a "normal fashion", got locked out of ANY internet access by ZA, and long story short, after wasting way too much of my life cleaning up that mess, I detest those (what I consider to be) unethical "people" at ZA.
Second firewall experience was Norton Internet Security ("NIS"). I encountered SEVERAL serious problems with NIS (ie, I migrated to Outlook 2000 from OE and NIS would not allow Outlook internet access) and had to contact Symantecs' farmed-out, backofficed, offshored almost-non-English-speaking, but definitely uncaring and even obnoxious, "tech support". They blatantly ignored what I patiently tried to communicate to them (maybe they didn't understand English…) and followed scripted procedures (badly, apparently), directing me to "solutions" for problems that I was not experiencing, never solving one single problem for me. Long story short, I don't need that kind of you-know-what, so with three months left on my yearly "contract", I went thru yet another nightmare of uninstalling NIS (and NAV!). But, what I learned there is that NIS and NAV are also "resource intensive" and seem to generate a fair amount of false alerts (although only about 1/100th of that of ZA's…).
Third firewall was Kerio/KPF. Great little product, emphasis on little, as in system "footprint". To me, the other plusses were that it installed (and uninstalled!) cleanly, did not mess with startup/shutdown times, was well configured "out of the box", did not report false alerts, had an intuitive GUI, had a good help facility, had a good forum, and of course met the criteria of a firewall as well as (or better than?) ZA or NIS.
Fourth firewall is Agnitum Outpost ("AO"). I almost went with AO instead of KPF, but in researching it, although it tended to score higher than other firewalls, I ran across a few "ranters" about BSOD's and that kind of stuff (probably ZA or NIS developers). Anyway, for reasons I won't bore you with, I did switch from KPF to AO, and find that it is a great product, as it minimally exhibits the plusses mentioned above for KPF, with none of the negatives of ZA and NIS, and does have a little better "feel" than KPF. But, don't rely on just my "opinion", keep on researching, there is a lot of info out there, but I think that if you wade through the biased input you might agree with my conclusions. At any rate, to be as safe as possible, I concur with the recommendation that you follow the advice on procuring a hardware firewall ("router"). Again, good luck.
Quote: Yes...I use Shield's Up regularly I've probably probed my ports more times than I've ..ohh..nevermind. lol
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey, I wanna know what it is........ :D
But back to the topic, I now use the Zone Alarm version 3.17 something I think, and it is great. I just had the Shields up test done, and it came out just about perfect too..
It works just as well as the older version did for me too.
Like I said in my earlier post, the only thing I've found to be it's equal so far is the ISA from Microsoft, and it runs about $1300.00 so Zone is looking like a very good deal now...
How "safe" is an old version of ZA ? Surely one of the reasons the app is upgraded is, apart from bug fixes, is to block security holes ? The more popular a firewall is the more hackers there are out there trying to find ways to circumvent it. Anyway, I just wanted to add that after uninstalling ZApro and installing Kerio my old W98 machine with 256 Megs of memory has speeded up by a magnitude of 10 and the mysterious lock ups have all but disappeared.
It's just a firewall. Monitors your access ports (hell like theres 65000 access ports to your pc? I don't remember. so shoot me for being approximate)
Your standard modem runs on the avg ports like port25 and port110 for email etc. The backdoor guys come in through the front door and lay the grounds for the bugs to go out the backdoors.. 'the other ports'
basically same with dsl. A firewall is a necessity. So what do you do? Well you can use the premium services that offer all the protection you'll ever need. Ya sure..
How safe is ZA.. about as safe as you let the fire wall to be max out is best. unless on compuserver etc.. A firewall isn't a.v. it's not a cure for all then you'll realize those services have been compromised until they beef up their systems. (barf when you count the costs)
Then you can surf in the wild.. pay a little more with reliable isp servers and create a mote like in a castle of olden times. A.v. ; Firewall; and run through a proxy. My crock pot.
(cs is a pretty good proxy.. aol is fingers down the throat for freedom to surf..)
So what next? The consumer or searcher hits these crummy sites and gets whacked. spam mail etc..
so? without a mote and crocks or aligators? you're going down eventually. crock meat anyone?
mach
Oh.. had to post because "monster" says read it and weap..
monsters.. No stay out of the damned trash can!! gotta go..
mach :D
Mach2 it maybe "just a firewall" but different versions of different firewalls are known to have their own weak points, these can be exploited by hackers.
http://www.securiteam.com/windowsntf...tive_data.html
keywester..I want to thank you for that extremely informative post, which I will refer to when the time comes :) I'm sorry it took so long to get back...once again..I was not notified in my email of any answers to any threads I was partcipating in..so I rechecked that option once again..and hopefully it will work. :)
As for my final decision, now I'm so confused! I just have to take into consideration that different firewalls work for some..and not for others..not to mention all different preferences amongst everyone.
I have been using Blackice Defender, which is now Blackice PC Protection (Not sure if that made it better or worse, but I don't detect a difference, except for some application protections that I disabled, since they were a pain), for years..and I have never once had a problem with it...plus it shows the info of the attacker, and stealths all of my ports. Most here would "poo poo" that...since it's not "technically" considered a firewall...but it has kept me safe from hacker and trojan attempts..sooo..it just goes to show you, some things work for some..even if they suck for others. I'm still not renewing it though, because since it's NOT technically a firewall.. and that worries me a bit. I had thought it was one for the longest time!
I've used a lot of different firewalls over the last few years and overall I like Outpost the most. Not only does it work exactly as advertised but the ad blocking the active content monitoring (java etc) and popup blocking and email attachment detecting are a bonus.
I have also recently just started using Kerio free firewall on my winxp laptop where I don't need all the extra stuff that outpost has because I don't use it for browsing that much and it's very good too.. again, works exactly as advertised.
My suggestion is if you spend a lot of time surfing and want the extra features of outpost go with that but if you want something simpler (to set up) and a more basic firewall go for Kerio.
So what is the verdict? What is the best Firewall out there to most people? Has anyone been taking the tally down, Lisa2k, what is going on now, and what do you plan to do? I have not seen anything yet about that.
How much longer will it be before I know, I have to know, the suspense is killing me.
Somebody scream the result please.
Thanks.
in reply to "ecrosson": OUTPOST !! or, KERIO !! dependant upon the so eloquently (AND concisely) stated parameters in the conclusion by "fink" the super moderator…
Really, I repeat, "I aint no expert", but frankly when I have put as much time as I have into firewalls over the last several years as I have, I historically should have a really good down to earth perspective on the situation. So, given that…
Yeh, I know that there is a major contingent of "hooked" twilight-Zone-Alarmers out there, and at the risk of drawing the wrath of this close-nit clan of beady-eyed zealots (WHY are you all that way???), I must state the truth. BECAUSE, I confess, "my name is jim", and I too was once severely addicted to the seductive allure of Twilight-zonealarm. Yeh, I had all the added bells and whistles plugins, the log analysis thing, all that, "mainlining" myself into oblivion. I not only was carelessly dropping way too much time every day apathetically waiting on my system to boot up and power down, I was also nonchalantly uncaringly acquiescing to the fact that my addiction to ZA was draining system resources, and now that my head is clear, I must confess that I was "alarmed" into recklessly dedicating my life to blindly perusing the ZA reports of the TWO to THREE THOUSAND "alerts" per day that were being logged (for those not paying attention to previous posts in this thread, that would be silly internet "noise") and saying to myself "Oh, golly gee, what a wonderful job my firewall is doing and what the @$#% do I do about all this stuff? And who in the wide internet world is actually trying to DO these pernicious atrocities TO me (because all the WHOISes in the world don't tell you nuttin about who is trying to hack you…)".
Seriously folks, I now feel "grown up", (maybe about 15 years old) like I have finally gotten off of seriously debilitating drugs, and moved on to a clean reality, which would be getting beyond being caught up in the extenuated machinations of the over-attentive (maybe anal-retentive?) internals of a firewall and all the extraneous irrelevant internet traffic that happens behind the scenes. All very interesting for a very short while if you happen to be caught up in a short retention span, but there is another world out there to move on to and actually do something wonderfully realistic besides dedicating your life to your firewall (which in my case had absolutely no ethics in baiting me into a pay-me-or-burn-in-hell nightmare - ahh, bitter to the last…)…
Lisa2k: the bottom line from (not quite) Key West (but frequently there, and ONLY in the "straight" part of the island) is to get a good firewall installed, and on that subject listen to "fink" in his prior post (recommending Outpost or KPF), turn off or ignore any "logging" of "alerts", do a little research to make sure that your firewall settings are adequate for your needs, then get on with your life and do what is actually important - conversely don't get "(zone)alarmed" into thinking that your firewall is your life. And, don't forget about the "router", from what I am able to ascertain, it is essential to being as secure as feasible…but, like I said, "I aint no expert"… One last time, best of luck, over and out…
No longer addicted in Dania Beach - anybody got a cold Guinness? Yeh, right, "which way's the beach"?
"What am I going to use?", is the question of the hour now. Well..like I said on another page of this thread, I am going to try a few of the aforementioned firewalls, one at a time, for about two days each, and see which one works best for me and my system (ie: all ports stealthed..not a system resource hog, quiet and unassuming) Then I will inevitably report back here with my decision..although it just may be a decision that works well on MY computer, but possibly not on someone else's.
I don't really think there is just ONE 'ideal' firewall that works for everyone (Not since the ZA 'days of yore', where EVERYONE *and their moms* recommended ZA ZA ZA! :D
In reading through this thread, it's a matter of personal preference, and each individual's computer, OS, RAM etc...But, at least this gave me a head start and a lot of great recommendations to sample, until I find my "ideal". I guess I was sort of hoping that their would be some kind of unanimous choice, but variety is the spice of life, and that may have been far too easy. LOL
Judging the long-winded recommendations of ZA it say's all.
If it's good it can be said in one sentence, (10 commandments or the whole bible.........)
Would NEVER touch it.:p
Lis2K!
Just read your last post, and was not clear if you were going to let ZA get it clutches on your PC or not, as you did indicate that you were going to try out some of the firewalls, so I feel compelled to issue a warning to be very cautious....
BEWARE ! If for some reason you might have a temporary lapse in good judgment and "try out" ZA, and subsequently UNinstall it (word is that you do NOT want to even have 2 firewalls installed at the same time...), be very cautious to find the sincerely long and monumentally detailed procedure of how to uninstall it, or you will run into a nightmare (like having ZA lock you out of any internet access for starters - imagine that for a while, and that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the process...). I think that you were going after a free firewall, so that would exclude NIS, but beware of the exact same problem there, altho it is not as involved as ZA's painfully long extraction process. Other firewalls like Kerio and Outpost shouldl uninstall easily and cleanly.
Hopefully, that should tell you something about ZA right there...
Good luck, we await your suspensefull conclusion :)
No worries, key...I realized, after reading a few more posts, that installing the older version of ZA would probably not be good, since it doesn't have updated protection. Not to mention the fact, that it did crash my machine and freeze me up when I tried it in the past.
Keywester,
Sorry to hear you had such a hard time uninstalling ZA.
I still use ver 2.6.88 because it works well for me (Win98SE not networked) and it has the 30+ ext checks in its MailSafe feature.
(this feature stopped every virus in OE so far, even before my anti-virus had to go to work)
I once tried the 3.X version, but I lost the extensions in MailSafe.
I went to the ZA site and made a copy on the complete removal procedure and then did it.
The whole task of doing the complete Uninstall (which sounded very formidable in your statement below) took only took a few minutes.
I am happy with the free 2.6.88 version and I use it after my router with very good results.
Quote:
Originally posted by keywester
Lis2K!
Just read your last post, and was not clear if you were going to let ZA get it clutches on your PC or not, as you did indicate that you were going to try out some of the firewalls, so I feel compelled to issue a warning to be very cautious....
BEWARE ! If for some reason you might have a temporary lapse in good judgment and "try out" ZA, and subsequently UNinstall it (word is that you do NOT want to even have 2 firewalls installed at the same time...), be very cautious to find the sincerely long and monumentally detailed procedure of how to uninstall it, or you will run into a nightmare (like having ZA lock you out of any internet access for starters - imagine that for a while, and that's just the proverbial tip of the iceberg of the process...). I think that you were going after a free firewall, so that would exclude NIS, but beware of the exact same problem there, altho it is not as involved as ZA's painfully long extraction process. Other firewalls like Kerio and Outpost shouldl uninstall easily and cleanly.
Hopefully, that should tell you something about ZA right there...
Good luck, we await your suspensefull conclusion :)
Sygate the ONLY one for me:D
Buffalo:
The entire uninstall process took several hours, I would say at least 3 hours, maybe 4 or 5. The process might have been extended somewhat due the fact that I had never run into a situation where I could not just simply uninstall a component thru normal add/remove. And maybe I am remembering/including things like getting locked out of ANY internet access after the first attempt at uninstalling (try to imagine trying to FIND information on what to do in that situation if you do not readily have another means of internet access....) and dealing with the process from that perspective. It has been a long time and I do not recall every hoop that I had to jump through, but some of the procedures in the process involved new and treacherous tasks for me, like manually deleting NUMEROUS entries from the registry (and of course trying to figure out HOW to do that without corrupting anything else, to include backing up the registry first, etc., all without readily available online access...). And of course, if I recall correctly, the time taken included little things like unsuccessfully trying restore back to a pre-uninstall checkpoint (I did not have a mirror image backup, my external hard drive went byebye with migration to XP).
And, I suppose that if it only took "a few minutes" for you, that surely ZA has refined the process since I was exposed to it (it seemed to be an obtusely drawn process out at the time...). And, maybe you are a pro and not new to the tasks like trudging thru removing all the registry entries, and so on... And maybe you are fast, not worried because you have a good restore procedure in place. Even so, only a few minutes??? Come on now, are you a ZA rep? :D
"version 6.2.88" ? hope you dont make mistakes like that when you are editing the registry...
Hi Keywester,
No, I am not an expert, but I always export any key I am planning to change or delete in the Registry so that when I mess up, I can restore that entry. :DQuote:
"version 6.2.88" ? hope you dont make mistakes like that when you are editing the registry...
I also keep a copy of the complete Registry before I begin.
A few things that I found to be very useful when Uninstalling any program was to End Task on all programs except Explorer when doing it so that there was less chance of a file being 'in use' that needed to be uninstalled and couldn't be.
Finish up with a reboot after each program uninstall and empty out the Windows\temp file.
When having a problem after an Uninstall, I re-install the program and check on the Internet or its Help file for additional info.
:DQuote:
Come on now, are you a ZA rep?
Hell, if I was a ZA rep, would I be using the old free version? :rolleyes: :D
I back and recommend what I think is good, not just because of what others say.
PS: I use Win98SE and I do not have any 'restore' points.
However, I do use a simple free program called RegBack that lets me save 14 or so Registries and allows me to use any one of them.
PS#2:
Now that you are more familar with editing the Registry,etc, I'll bet it would only take you a few minutes to do it all over again. :o
Another great free program is AddRemove Pro which does a much more thorough uninstall than the plain Win98 AddRemove does.
:)
Buffalo:
quote: "I'll bet it would only take you a few minutes to do it all over again."
LOL, don't think I could pull of the ENTIRE process now in less than an hour, I go pretty slow with stuff like that -- but one thing is for sure, I will never find out, 'cause the reason I was UNinstalling ZA was because I got burned by them and as a matter of principle, along with other numerous negative factors that I am now very much aware of (already stated for the most part), I wouldn't touch a ZA related product with the proverbial ten foot pole...
over and out
Keywester,
You are just following the old proverb:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
:D :D :D :cool:
buffalo - I have no idea what you are actually attempting to imply, but my guess is that it is just as well that I don't - I aint foolin nobody about nothin, but I got a feelin you are trying to buffalo somebody here...
Keywester,
No hidden meaning at all.
It just means that when you get 'suckered' the second time, it's your fault.
ZA is not for you. :D
I installed ZA after either Fuelman or Delthro told me I needed one. So far so good, but then, I have not taken the time to figure out how to make sure it is setup correctly. I have ver 3.7 and so far so good. Not sure sometimes when I get messages that IP addresses are trying to access my computer weather they are legit or not.
Brewster:
My condolences. Don't just take my word for this -- you might want to do a forum search (either here, and/or try boardreader.com) on the subject of ZA and excessive over-reporting of ordinary internet "noise" as warning "alerts".
Why does ZA aggrandize the harmless noise and "over-report" it as alerts? To make you feel like the 'wall is doing it's job and that you have a lot more to beware of than is actually necessary ("so you better upgrade to the "pro" ver$ion...").
When I had ZA running and I was initially monitoring the traffic, ZA was logging two to three THOUSAND "alerts" per day, usually less than an hundred of which appeared to be of a malicious (or only suspicious) nature. And, when I was still a little backwards about firewalls (before being informed of reality by some kindly and honest folks on this forum), I was actually deceived into thinking that ZA was doing a better job than other firewalls because of the high volume of alerts that it was reporting ("duh, gee whiz, those other firewalls miss 2 to 3,000 intrusion attempts per day").
Anyway, one vein of advice seems to be to get a firewall setup and optimized to prevent intrusions, then turn off all alerts and logging and forget about the (software) firewall (then get a router as a hardware firewall, etc.). Well, don't forget about it all together -- keep up with the latest on V.Dr to ensure your online safety...
Good luck. By the way, if you ever uninstall your ZA software, I would be interested if you somehow manage to pull that off in "a few minutes", or how long it actually takes...
Lisa2k:
How about an update?
:)
My recommendations.
Running Win98 2.5 Ghz ADSL
http://www3.telus.net/Nitsch/page3.html
:)
No update yet guys..my BI subscribtion still hasn't run out. I will let you know when I install a new one after it expires :) I promise!
I use Agnitum's Outpost and have never had a problem with it, until I upgraded it. The new version of Outpost has a problem with windows 98. I had to uninstall the new version and wait for Agnitum to send me a link by email to get the old version back. Looking at the Outpost forum, I saw several others had the same problem as me with the new version not working with windows 98. So beware of Outpost if your running windows 98.
Been quite awhile since i've looked at this thread. I have to say, i don't care to rant as long as some do regarding an opinion. But i have to say, i discovered very quickly when first getting involved with computers back in 97'( no,,i am not an ol' DOS monkey:p ),i was too busy running my rig across the US and parts of Canada to get involved with these boxes. But,,i digress,,,when i finally decided to find out what it was all about because of disability, it didn't take long to discover the need for protection on the net.
After looking at several firewalls for my Win95,98FE and then 98SE OS's, i found Zone Alarm. It was the 2.6v that garnered my interest because of all the action it blocked. Now that i have cable and a router with NAT, good ol' ZA has very little to do. Every time i go to Steve Gibsons site and shut down the NAT, all the ports checked show "stealth". I also use his "call home" test occasionally and ZA blocks it every time.
As far as uninstalling,yes,i had problems the first time i tried. Didn't take me long to figure out that a program that has to integrate itself so solidly into your system to do what it has to is not a simple add-remove situation. As others have said,i went to ZA's site and printed-out the uninstall instructions and it took very little time to do the next time.
IMHO, bottom line is: to each their own. But when someone asks for my opinion on what's a good program, i'm going to give them the best one i know of from experience. I would not want someone suggesting i use a program when they have little or no personal experience with it. And if i wasn't sure of something as important as system security,, i'd keep my mouth shut and try to learn from those who do know...:)
best free personal firewall comes with a router ... no questions hands down
on my dmz'd machine ive run tiny/bi/za/internet guarddog
all were fine
and yes you can run 2 at the same time ... i ran tiny and black ice for over a year
currently i am running zone alarm on the dmz'd machine because its free and i didnt feel like setting tiny up (even tho the footprint is about a 1/4 of the size)
inho the only good thing about a firewall is monitoring outbound traffic
i would imagine so ... you effective have no computers connect to the net after you do this ... gibson was probing your router at that timeQuote:
Originally posted by Ridgerunr
shut down the NAT, all the ports checked show "stealth".
you dont need a firewall if you behind a router because the router serves as a firewall
only time you need a firewall is if you set a computer into a dmz or want to monitor the outboud traffic
just my 2C
Perhaps i wasn't clear? The NAT makes you invisible to the internet. So,,it looks like your "stealthed" at GRC if your router is running. "false positive". To involve your firewall in the test,you should remove the router from the line. also, be aware the NAT only makes you "seem" to be invisible. You can be random pinged and possibly entered if running a NAT. And to me, a basic function of a "good" firewall is to stop traffic both ways and notify you. NAT is a good "daisy" in the "chain",but not a reliable firewall as such...:)