Spyware, viruses, & security forum: ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall

After reading Carol Post below it got me thinking how they could give away something that they have to pay for. The only thing I can think of is that somehow they must not to pay Kaspersky for the engine.

http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102-5305823.html?tag=posts;msg5305823

It's pretty well known that such things are done to capture buyers that would not otherwise buy such things.
Bob

I have been doing more digging and they have yet to set this up on there web site except to announce it. They link you to a CNET download.com to get it. They are still charging for ZoneAlarm Pro and Anitvirus. When I saw they added the 2013 to the name I thought they had a new release. I can not find any mention of v11 or anything else. Seem they just combined the free Firewall with the Kaspersky antivirus engine and called it 2013 and set the price as free to get people to give it a try. They must have an agreement with Kaspersky that they do not have to pay for the use of the engine that is downloaded with the free Firewall. I guess we will see how well this works out for them. I know that v10 and the changes they made has not worked out as well as they thought it would and this might be their reaction to try to get people to try it and then buy one of the paid for version. If that is the case they should consider bringing back the features they dropped with the intro of v10 that all their user raised so much fuss about.

Free stuff is subject to what the maker/owner/vendor is willing to part with. We have little right and imagine the free user to exclaim "I'm not going to use your stuff anymore!"

No income so no loss.
Bob

ZoneAlarm is known for bundling Conduit Toolbar with their programs. That is a hideous program that takes a blow torch to get it out of your system. I question if they get paid for that. In the past they where known for installing it even after you unchecked the box for it. They have now moved Conduit to the installer that downloads the free program for you, so that even makes me question that more. They even have it in the paid versions of ZoneAlarm. I found that out a couple of nights ago downloading ZoneAlarm Pro. These so called free firewalls have a good thing going as far as how they populate that white list. You got to ask yourself how does 15,000,000 programs get preapproved to access the net.

I do know that ZoneAlarm is hurting since they released v10 2012. They have had a big problem with getting people to renew there subscriptions and more then they will admit have jumped ship on them. That is why when I read this it peaked my curiosity about the kap engine and how they would be able to pay if they had a pay per download agreement with them. I got this new version downloaded and plan to take a look in a day or two when i get time to take it to task. I always hold out hope that a company, that strayed from their original path, to return to what made them a leader. I have my doubts but It would be unfair to them for me to give it a bad rating and tell people not to install it without trying it.

Keep in mind, at one time I was a user of a paid versions of ZoneAlarm. In was my humble opinion that they had the best firewall on the market. ZoneAlarm Pro configured correctly and paired with a good AV gave you good security suite. Their desire to bundle junk like Conduit and the second worst customer service for something that was bought and paid for drove me away from them.

We have more choices in the area of free protection. I can only guess those that were spoiled (need another word here) by the prior version features would whine about it.

But we have lots of choices.
Bob

I feel they have joined the others ( free ) in what I consider false claims about security. The so called free firewalls are trading the customers security for a program that is not a true firewall. When it comes right down to it, the user is more at fault then the company because they should educate themselves about what they are installing. Hmmm They call that let the buyer (user) beware. The gray area of what is being called free is why I protest (sometimes loudly) just in case someone takes the times to do some reading and see that someone out in the depth and darkness of the net is calling foul.

I have said in other post and not just about firewalls that data collection is the new and improved way of profiting on the web. If they would just be honest about it then there would be no need to protest. Most user do not even know what programs are in the whitelist and are phoning home or what is phone home about. That is why we have seen this explosion of the so called free firewalls with the huge whitelist. If they are trading their privacy for the program it is not free, especially if the user has no idea it is happening. That does fall back on the user but at least one lone voice can try to call foul. lol

That's news to me. I'm pretty old school on this since a long time ago I was on a team writing router code. To us a firewall had rules and in our world a true firewall followed the rules.

Firewalls are pretty simple things and we watched ZoneAlarm rise and thought what a great thing they did by making it available to folk that did not want to deal with such things.

Later we implemented stateful inspection.

It would be fun to hear what makes a firewall a "true firewall."
Bob

I was wondering if you would jump on that. I think we have talked or debated to many times. lol

In the beginning, if my feeble old mind remembers correctly, we set up rules for what IP addy could be access. By controlling the IP,s they controlled the puter. I can remember what they called a hardware firewall came in but yet they used software to access it, to set what IP could and could not be access. I always made them mad by asking why do you call it a hardware firewall when you use software to tell it what to do and it uses software to do it. Why isn't it a software firewall? LMOMBO See i was even a pain back then to. Back then we were on corporate machines and yes they controlled where we could go and they still do.

As the PC developed it became apparent we needed control over what could get in and out of them and one of the first ( if not the first ) and easiest to use was ZoneAlarm. So, when I say a true firewall, I am referring to what we use on our PC since that is what we are discussing. I know that when we go back to the days of main frames and mini puters what we called firewalls differ greatly from what we have now on our PC.

ZoneAlarm did not concern itself with what IP addy could be access. It determined what programs could access the net. It was first in being able to stealth port 139. So many of the PC firewalls really struggled with that and that was ZoneAlarm claim to fame back in the day. They also provided us with a simple click to say yes it can or no it can not and took care of everything else under the hood. Then we had good control over what got into and out of the puter. Sadly, slowly, people have been surrendering control of what goes on with their puters and what is going to get out of it.

SO when I refer to a true firewall, I am referring to those that we use on our PC and how they determine what programs can have access to the net.

PS Please try not to show our age. I know I am old now I think your close to me. lol

This one was fun to put to the test. We learned pretty quick to rename our app (example at https://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=66443&lngWId=1 )

So now my app can name itself and sidestep the true firewall.

It was a good idea.
Bob

Yes that did become a problem and that is why I always bad mouth whitelist. One of the greatest things about ZoneAlarm in the manual mode was that you could name your program anything you wanted. The first time that program tried to access the net you got a pop up asking you if you wanted to give it access. That was the one thing I had to take time to teach people, did you start that program or did it start by itself. That normally took me about 15 minutes to get across to people.

That is also how the whitelist became my hated feature in the modern firewall. Some how they convinced people that the pop up was annoying and they should turn over control of what is going on in there puter to them and to get rid of that annoying pop up. I always saw that pop up as one of the best security feature in all firewalls. That is why i always loved the remember this setting in the ZoneAlarm pop up. It allowed me to pick how in the future I wanted the firewall to handle the program.

ZoneAlarm also developed, like so many of the other companies, a method of determining if the program has changed or been taken over by another program. That also gave a level of security by the so called I can name it anything so I want can side step the firewall.

I have seen the I can call my program a name on your whitelist and get by the security feature that verifies that and get to the net. I have yet to see that happen when the firewall is in manual mode. The firewall in auto mode using a whitelist is a greater threat then a firewall in manual mode using a pop up that annoys those who profit from having control over the user puter.

Your preaching to the choir when it comes to the malware and how it affects the manufacturers. I think your last statement says more then most people will realize.