black ice or zone alarm

[watts3000]

Which product is better I'm new to personel firewalls, please list any links on product reviews if you have some.

 

[GreenGecko]

Personally, I use Zone Alarm. It's free for personal use and very reliable. Go to this site and search for "Hacker Proof" that will produce several articles and reviews for you.

Personal Firewalls

You may also want to look on ZoneLabs site for more information.
Sorry, I wasn't able to get a direct link to the articles. Hope this helps. ZoneLabs Website

 

[wolf papa]

Zone Alarm here, too

 

[bcterps]

I use Sygate Personal Firewall and havent had many complaints. I switched from ZoneAlarm cause it was giving me stability problems. I do miss some of the features of ZoneAlarm, like the how you can completely lock down all internet activity, but other than that, I've been quite happy with it. It's free too, which is an extra plus

--Ben

 

[TheWart]

my fav (and i have tried all but Sygate) is Tiny Personal Firewall. it is small, easily configurable, and works like a charm with winxp and does not crash games, etc.

 

[DocDoo]

watts3000... Just so you know, BlackIce is not really a "firewall" (at least not technically). BlackIce does not block any OUTBOUND packets and this can be a problem if you get a virus, trojan or spy-ware. Having said that, if only given a choice between the 2 you mentioned, I would still go with BlackIce!!! (Have found ZAP to be nothing but aggravation)

From a technical standpoint, TinyFirewall is definitely the best software "firewall." However, since you new to firewalls, I can't really recommend it to you since it requires a greater understanding of how TCP/Protocols/Filters work.

So for you I suggest SyGate Personal Firewall

 

[madthumbs]

You just have to be patient with Zone Alarm for like one day til you learn how it works. It's not as aggravating as it seems at first. I tried it a few times before, and after getting frustrated with Black Ice crashing (common problem) I tried it this last time, and am very pleased with it!

 

[alrocky]

Any opinions of Norton Internet Security 2002 and it's personal firewall? How does it compare? It wasn't free like the aforementioned Zone Alarm but available for $19 OEM at JCS software. The 2001 version for $12.

 

[Palek]

ZoneAlarm is definitely worth trying. I was using the free version for a year and I liked it so much that I paid ZoneLabs for the Pro version. Sure it bugs you with every single program in the beginning, but if you are gonna get upset about that, well... I mean, how could your firewall possibly decide for itself which programs should or should not have access to the internet? Getting permission from the user is the safest way, if you ask me. If you don't know about whether or not you should give access to a certain executable, you deny access first, and then you have a chance to go looking on the web for that file and its function before it wreaks havoc on your (and someone else's) machine.

As for Norton Firewall, I heard a while back that it can be fooled very easily by a trojan that renames itself to a filename (such as iexplore.exe) that already has access permission. They might have fixed this problem since then, though. (I certainly hope so ) Norton is alright as a company, they make reasonably good products, but ZoneLabs are the pros in the security field, not Norton.

ZoneAlarm gets my vote.

 

[Aquaman]

Zone Alarm........... no problems with XP.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[Miramonti]

These aren't reviews but is guru Steve Gibson's 'scorecard' and info about various firewalls. He loathes Black Ice because once a trojan is in on your system it can't block it, and he created a utility called Leaktest 1.0 to test firewalls for this. Instead of BlackIce improving thier firewall to monitor traffic coming from inside the computer going to the internet, they updated BlackIce to detect specifically Gibson's Leaktest and block it!

Thus the new leaktest 1.1 to unveil its vulnerability once again.

I've used Zone Alarm and even bought ZA 2.6 pro because I liked it so much but overall I had many system conflicts with it and the Datek Streamer crashes the computer with it. I've been using Sygate for about 6 months now and love it.

 

[phreakyzen]

Zone Alarm is very nice and has many nice features.

My favorite is the auto-lock when your computer goes to screen saver.

 

[Salvador]

I used Black Ice and first and liked the UI, but I questioned whether it was working or not.

I also tried Neo Watch, but once again, was skeptical about its effectiveness.

I'm using ZA Pro right now and hate it. For some reason, every time I fire up WinXP Pro, the damn thing keeps asking me if I want to give access to about 4 different things. Most of which being Windows updates. I keep checking the box and saying yes and I've even changed it in the menu, but I still get the damn pop ups every time I boot.

I'm thinking about checking out Tiny Personal Firewall. I heard some great things about it and have to do something different than having to deal with these annoying pop ups all the time.

Sal

 

[Staver]

I use ZA Pro, and no problems in W2K. Norton's didn't stealth all ports like the others. That is why it scored low on many reviews. It also didn't block Adbots til they quietly patched it.

 

[syzygy]

currently, neither. i still have zonealarm on my hd but i prefer to use agnitum outpost firewall .
it comes both in pro and free versions. i'm not sure i reallly need a firewall; since it doesn't eat up much
space, and i have some to spare, why not.

 

[alrocky]

My thanks to Palek for the caveat and to jjsole for the link. My rig passed the 2 tests on that site. I'll have to remember the strong recommendation here for ZoneAlarm. Free is not bad too.