Zone Alarm - the Good the Bad and the Ugly

							Zone Alarm - the Good the Bad & 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
software, Zone Alarm has also grown with every new version. One of the
most well known features of Zone Alarm is that it requests permission
from the user every time the computer accesses a new site, ensuring that
you have the freedom to select or deny the site in terms of your
preferences.
This feature may sometimes cause annoyance, especially when you are in
the middle of working on something important, or if you wish to be
uninterrupted while playing a computer game. Many a user has no doubt
felt frustrated and hampered by old versions of the program causing
periodic interruptions. Consequently, one of the latest versions of Zone
Alarm offers the option for you to automatically select or refuse alerts
in the program's 'Game Mode'.
Apart from 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 recovery or back up options, Zone Alarm
Security Suite 7 is a viable option for online protection since it is
well known for its practically intuitive 'learning' 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 do not get with
programs such as Norton. Although it may seem like a small detail, being
unable to uninstall an antivirus program can lead to several annoyances,
minor ones being issues like the program regularly asking you to upgrade,
and more significant ones like the old program interfering with a new one
that you may choose to install on your system.
Zone Labs has also been lauded for the much appreciated Auto Learn
feature available in Zone Alarm, which allows users to customize their
systems according to their particular preferences. Since it also offers
protection from identity theft, Zone Alarm is unquestionably one of the
best protection programs available online. Users also have the
flexibility to have their credit card details and other financial
information monitored via a real time online system, and are sent alerts
when suspicious activity is detected. Zone Alarm can also assist you to
stop receiving hard copies of junk mail and spam in your snail mail.
One area where users have found Zone Alarm to be a little 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 can be determined and
controlled by the user. While this may give certain users a sense of
flexibility and control over their antivirus systems, others would no
doubt like a more conventional system of protection that uses inbuilt
resources and updates to protect the computer from malicious attacks.
For more info on Zone Alarm and free & paid Firewalls + comprehensive
quality info on Internet Security head over to
http://www.easypcsecurity.com