Zone alarm: the good, the bad and the ugly

Zone Alarm is a free firewall program that also comes with advanced features for those who wish to opt for them. Like most antivirus programs, Zone Alarm has also grown with each new version. One of Zone Alarm’s best-known features is that it requests user permission each time the computer accesses a new site, ensuring that you have the freedom to select or reject the site based on your preferences.

This feature can sometimes cause inconvenience, especially when you are working on something important, or you want to not be interrupted while playing a computer game. No doubt, many users have been frustrated and hampered by old versions of the program that cause regular outages. Consequently, one of the latest versions of Zone Alarm gives you the option to select or reject alerts automatically in the ‘Game Mode’ of the program.

Besides Zone Alarm Firewall, Zone Alarm Security Suite 7 is another option for the average user. This program installs quickly and uninstalls just as easily when you need to remove it. Although it has the disadvantage of not having any backup or recovery options, Zone Alarm Security Suite 7 is a viable option for online protection, as it is well known for its almost intuitive ‘learn’ function that allows the program to understand your preferences in terms of how often it asks you if you want to continue to a particular website.

Also, the uninstall feature is an added benefit that you don’t get with programs like Norton. Although it may seem like a small detail, not being able to uninstall an antivirus program can cause a number of annoyances, the least of which being the program regularly prompting you to update, and the most significant being the old program interfering with a new one that you may opt for. install on your system.

Zone Labs has also been praised for the highly appreciated Auto Learn feature available in Zone Alarm, which allows users to customize their systems to their individual preferences. Since it also offers protection against identity theft, Zone Alarm is undoubtedly one of the best protection programs available online. Users also have the flexibility to monitor their credit card details and other financial information through an online system in real time, receiving alerts when suspicious activity is detected. Zone Alarm can also help you stop receiving junk mail and spam paper copies in your regular mail.

One area where users have found Zone Alarm a bit questionable is its method of identifying trusted sites. Unlike programs like AVG, which use their own toolbars to monitor the security of a visited website, Zone Alarm uses a database of “trusted” sites that the user can determine and control. While this may give some users a sense of flexibility and control over their antivirus systems, others would no doubt like a more conventional protection system that uses built-in features and updates to protect the computer from malicious attacks.