which firewall is better?

[catk102]

Which one would you prefer and why? Zonealarm (free version) or Sygate?From what I understand Zonealarm is a little better but can be a real pain to uninstall and a little harder to configure than Sygate,while I have no problem with Zonealarm my husband hates it and alwas turns it off, he likes Sygate sort of but it does not seem as secure,whats your opinion?

[morriswindgate]

Sygate, ZA, and Tiny all use the same logic for protection, basically the only diff is in the presentation you see on the screen. I like sygate because of the control panel it has.

[suenbob2]

You both should agree on witch system, if he shuts it off there's no sense in having it for just you.I use zonealarm its nice when all setup an running.

[catk102]

You both should agree on witch system, if he shuts it off there's no sense in having it for just you.I use zonealarm its nice when all setup an running.


I understand what you saying but I just convinced my husband a month ago to forget AOL dial up and we now have DSL so its really important now,I went ahead and installed zonealarm and configuring it now so hopefully by the time he gets the computer it wont keep popping up specially since I still have not solved the mystery of the disapearing tool bar(altho it seems to be yahoo messenger related,but the tasks are still running) so maybe he won't realize.I had tried sygate before and didn't much care dor it.

[Force Flow]

I like sygate because it's fairly straight forward and you can easily check what applications are coming in and going out.

[catk102]

Yeah I had that one when I was still on AOL dial up and that one didn't work so well for me but then from what I heard AOl does not play well with firewalls period so that might have been the cause of that.

[Force Flow]

In my opinion, AOL is the worst provider you can get. Ten bucks or more than a standard dial-up ISP and quite a bit slower, too.

[morriswindgate]

With dial-up a firewall is pretty much a waste since everytime you log on you get a different address. Anyway a hacker isn't going to waste his time going after a computer on dial-up. All you need on dial-up is an upto date anti-virus program running.

[catk102]

Yeah thats why I got SBCyahoo DSl about a month ago (thought I mentioned that?) So now it is an issue where with AOL dial up it really wasnt.

[wolfie]

zone alarm gave me problems. i use sygate now. much easier to use.

wolfie

[Confused]

Put yourself in back of a router. I had all kinds of problems with the free version of ZA. I use a router now. A hardware firewall is hard to beat and is for the most part passive.
Chas

[Force Flow]

Are you sure a firewall on dial-up is useless? I've been getting hit more frequently (about once a week) with trojans.

[reboot]

Those trojans are probably coming in through email, not someone hacking.
Just to be clear, a firewall does absolutely nothing to prevent viri, trojan's, nor worms from infecting your computer.
An Anti-virus program does nothing to stop hacking, nor DDOS attacks.
Hackers, for the most part, aren't interested in your (or mine) puny little system, and if they really wanted to, a software firewall like ZA or Sygate isn't going to stop them for long. They're interested in businesses, ISP's, and corporate computers that are not protected. The fact that you may get a port scan from a hacker just means that his software is scanning a span of IP's, and yours happens to be within the parameters set.
If you truly want to be invisible, get a router with a hardware firewall built in, and run behind a program such as GhostSurf.
You still may get a trojan/worm, unless you are running an up to date anti-virus system, and stay away from downloads you're not sure of, and refrain from clicking on every attachment you get in email. Stop using Outhouse Express, and get a real text based email client, a good spam killer, turn off (uninstall) VBS support, and a host of other things that would just make life difficult on the net.
If you want to surf and download and send/get email, you take your chances.
The only absolute way you're not going to get hacked or infected is to sell the computer and take up a different hobby.