Software Firewall
A Software Firewall (or Personal Firewall) helps to keep your computer safe. It can stop malicious crackers (hackers are the good guys ;)) on the Internet from secretly gaining access to your computer and either planting malicious code (e.g. a virus) or using your computer by remote control to attack other computers.
A Software Firewall also allows you to grant or deny outgoing Internet traffic to programs on your computer, thereby protecting your privacy.
Windows XP and Windows Vista have a built-in Personal Firewall. However, by default they don’t offer the same level of protection or options that you can get from 3rd party programs.
Up until recently I always used ZoneAlarm (ZA), and I think it still offers a good level of protection and it’s easy to use. However, I read somewhere (need to find the link again) that ZA was no longer the best free Software Firewall available 🙁 The other thing that I dislike about it is that they have made it progressively harder to find the free edition of ZA on their website. Therefore, when upgrading it’s all too easy to click on the non-free version, which appears to be by design 😐 . But then that seems to be a growing trend for Freeware, as opposed to Open Source Software.
So, recently I’ve tried a different one: Comodo. It appears to have all the features necessary and is reasonably easy to use. I haven’t used it that much yet though, so can’t say much more about it now!
2 users commented in " "Free" Alternatives #3 – Software Firewall "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackAn update. Recently a Windows Update (kb951748) caused ZoneAlarm (ZA) to block all Internet Access, even though the settings suggested that it should be allowed.
I didn’t know what the cause of the problem was at the time – but tracked it down to ZA. So, I uninstalled ZA from the computer I was using and installed Comodo. I use this computer quite regularly so have had more chance to test it out. It does work differently to ZA and it takes some time to get used to the different pop-up warnings/messages, but so far I think it is probably just as easy to use and I’m quite happy with it 🙂
Last week I noticed that the computer mentioned above was running slowly. I finally got around to tracking down the cause. A Comodo file was taking up 89-97% of my computer processes most of the time (cmdagent.exe).
I had a look around and found out that others were having a similar problem.
Although I haven’t definitely confirmed the cause, it seems that a recent update of Comodo conflicts with Windows XP SP3 (which I had also recently applied to this computer).
So, until a new Comodo version is out, I’m back with ZoneAlarm!