BlackICE or ZoneAlarm?

[toph99]

which is more effective for keeping people out of my computer?(i have a DSL) thanx

 

[pdo]

I'm using ZoneAlrm Pro. Don't know which one is better but I never have any problems so.

 

[Kanly]

I've used both, first BlackIce then ZoneAlarm.

ZoneAlarm very easy to setup and free.

Liked it better than BlackIce.

From a secuirty standpoint, I would hazard a guess that they both offer the same protection.

 

[toph99]

right now i'm using the free version of ZoneAlarm. would having the full version of BlackICE be better?

 

[BCYL]

From my own personal experience, BlackICE tends to give a lot of false alarms... Like for example it will report that a friend's PC is trying to scan my computer when he is just sending me an ICQ msg...

so I like ZoneAlarm better...

 

[Motorheader]

ZoneAlarm - without a doubt.

BlackIce and those damn shutdown errors that they have been trying to fix - the ones that really don't "exist" have plagued it from the beginning. And the false alarms. And the 3 updates in a week. Who needs another program that is supposed to protect you causing more blue screens and other cryptic error messages?

ZoneAlarm - free or paid for - still tops in my book. Never a problem.

 

[Deslok]

Another vote for Zone Alarm,
too many false alarms with Black Ice.

 

[MooseKnuckle]

Use both, seem to do the job. NeoTrace is an excellent compliment to see who's intruding.

 

[Sporko]

One more vote for ZoneAlarm.

 

[Strike]

Another vote for ZoneAlarm.

It helped me determine that I had QAZ trojan. I also found the McAffee did not detect it. I am going to try out Norton as the symantec site had much more info regarding QAZ and how to remove it from your system. They also posted a fixqaz exe that cleans up your system. McAfee only said run with latest DAT files, which I did, and it didn't do squat.

Strike

 

[snow patrol]

Zone alarm is an excellent program.

 

[Fallen Kell]

They are both very good, but I don't know what everyone is conplaining about with BlackICE. It only yells at you for recieving and send ICQ messages because you have it setup to monitor/block the port number that ICQ uses, and in my book that is a VERY GOOD thing. What it means is that by default your system is pretty much locked down, and then you open up ports as you need them, not the other-way around. If it was the other-way around, you wouldn't even notice if someone is able to breach you firewall because several ports were open that didn't need to be.

I also have not had any "blue screens" from BlackICE, only an occasional "Program has performed an illegal instruction" error in which case I just click on close.

I have used both programs and I like BlackICE better, but if you can't don't want to spend $40 (or $10 with the best buy deal (might be over) )...get Zone Alarm, but you do need something. BlackICE saved me several times, and I was able to have the offending intruder(s) prosecuted every time that the offense was serious.

 

[tim0thy]

CheckPoint Firewall.

 

[Zach]

BlackICE is pretty nasty in a local LAN environment, you have to add IP's manually to trust.. I had to write a perl script to add every 192.168.0.x IP possible since I use DHCP... I use Zone Alarm only now, but I was running both (it's fun to see what @Home is scanning for.

 

[javathehut]

I had BlackICE and I had no problem with it really. The only thing that I didn't like is that you have to manually set up the firewall to allow acess to certain ports (Such as port 80 for HTTP Servers). It lets all programs access the internet. Zone Alarm, on the other hand, asks you if you want to allow certain programs to access the Internet. I personally like Symantec Personal Firewall, since you have a lot of control over your firewall. As far as security goes, I think Black Ice may have better security since it focuses on individual people hacking into your computer.

 

[tim0thy]

i believe there is an option inside ZoneAlarm that allows you to add a scope of IPs for deny or access. You didn't really need to write that perl script... but it's cool that you did anyways

 

[Eug]

Zone Alarm has been a pain in the @ss for me. Installed it twice and both times I turned it off after a day. BlackICE is much more user friendly and has been 100% stable. I even leave it on when gaming, with no ill effects.