Zone Alarm is spying on you

Scruff

Looks like the much recommended Zone Alarm firewall is actually a nasty bit of spyware itself, informing the Isralei Secret Service on what you're up to (or so the story goes).
Story here

uninstalled myself ages ago cause i was finding it was causing more problems than it was actually potentially stopping.

bungeecork

Of couse, as long as it's just the Isreali Secret Service keeping tabs on the web sites I visit then I can sleep soundly in a world safe for democracy. Heaven forbid it was the Iranian Secret Service. Now that would be a cause for concern, eh!

Explosive_Cornflake

I always hated ZA, for other reason though.

Endurance Man

Ditched that in favour of Sygate yonks ago, glad i did . Why do the israelis care about all the pron i look it ?

Scruff

Well here is their response to the accusation. Taken from theInquirer

"For any users who are concerned about this communication between the user’s PC and the Zone Labs servers, it is important to note that Zone Labs does not infringe upon the privacy of our customers. We don’t save personal information. We don’t do many other things that legitimate software companies do to enhance their marketing efforts, like use persistent Web cookies. This conservative approach is intentional because we take privacy extremely seriously.
"After being contacted by James Borck of Infoworld, we maintained an ongoing dialogue with him to discover the source of his issue. Initially, we were unable to reproduce it in our labs, until he submitted his log files. At that point, we were able to identify the bug and provided Mr. Borck with a temporary workaround. We never refuted his contention that an issue existed, although it did take some time to replicate it. "The actual communication in dispute is a simple encrypted GET request that is checking to see if the user’s security software is current. We will continue to work with Mr. Borck and anyone else who might have any concerns about this issue."

NutJob

Thats a bs response

alot of apps are now calling home iv recently seen debugging software from microsoft "fiddler" that says a polite hello to the server with its version number

not intrusive but a long running and worrying trend.

All thats next is DRM + call home apps and itll be like getting changed in a glasshouse :-)

3 cheers for open source

Trotter

I use Zone Alarm... so say I get rid of it, whats the best free alternative?

Pataman

sygate personal firewall free

Steoob

Trotter wrote:

I use Zone Alarm... so say I get rid of it, whats the best free alternative?

or else dont get rid of it becuase the OP article is more than likely BULL****

Dell-Boy

Pataman wrote:

sygate personal firewall free

went to their web site, says it's no longer available.

aidan_walsh

Pataman wrote:

sygate personal firewall free

Bought and canned by Symantec.

rsynnott

The software checks if there's a more up-to-date version available. Shock, horror! But oh, no, it must be bad, because it's made by the scary Jews!!!

Really, there is probably nothing to worry about here.

Martyr

I think there is alot more going on than Checkpoint are willing to admit.
If you look at the internal code, there is quite alot of uploading/downloading going on & nothing about it is mentioned on their website.

OK, i know they're hardly going to announce to everyone how ZA works.
Some of the uploading is with user consent, for example if ZA crashes, & you want to send logs to them to analyse the bug that created it.
Downloading updates is with user consent also i guess.

But at the same time there is other stuff going on, which may not involve user consent, & it may be innocent enough, in that they're analysing what applications are allowed access to the internet & possibly what ip addresses they connect to.

But imagine if you are a registered user, & you have obviously a special id, which in a database corresponds to your name/address..etc

i suppose in some ways you could spy on that client, if you wanted.

i wouldn't dismiss a claim that says ZA spys on people until somebody disassembles the software & finds out first.

but as rsynott says, it could be nothing, then again, who knows for sure?

Baldie

So what's the next best alternative? Zone alarm is being knocked and Sygate has been discontinued. So which one should I go for? Im in the middle of setting up a newly built PC and Im looking for a firewall. Im after getting AntiVir and Avast anti virus as well. Dunno which I'll use yet, probablt both to be safe(r).....
Is SoftPerfect any good?

Paulw

Ever heard of the word "paranoid" ??? :eek: Come on guys. I find ZoneAlarm great, especially since it does it's job and it's free. Most apps these days report back to the supplier with information -version, updates etc. Nothing new there.

And the fix in the article says to -

In the meantime you can work around it by adding:
# Block access to ZoneLabs Server
127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com
to your Windows host file.

Block access to 127.0.0.1 ?? The loopback address? LOL.

Esel

Paulw wrote:

Ever heard of the word "paranoid" ??? :eek: Come on guys. I find ZoneAlarm great, especially since it does it's job and it's free. Most apps these days report back to the supplier with information -version, updates etc. Nothing new there.

And the fix in the article says to -

In the meantime you can work around it by adding:
# Block access to ZoneLabs Server
127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com
to your Windows host file.

Block access to 127.0.0.1 ?? The loopback address? LOL.

LOL at your lack of understanding. That entry assigns the loopback address to zonelabs.com. It doesn't block access to 127.0.0.1. Sheesh!

mike65

http://www.tucows.com/preview/213160

mike

Martyr

Yeah, funnily enough, i would still use zonealarm.

i think its mainly just product updates, bug reporting..but its a huge program with alot of encryption involved in various procedures, & its very hard to tell whats going on, so you can expect all sorts of crazy theories to be running around in peoples crazy minds..including mine! :rolleyes:

it would be cool if somebody like mark russinovich started poking at it & writing about it in his blog.. but i wouldn't hold my breath, i'm sure he's better things to do.