Is your firewall spying on you? [Zone Alarm gets rumbled]

theinquirer.net ^ | Sunday 22 January 2006 | Paul Hales

[B4Ranch]

Does anyone know more about this?

[oolatec]

Software firewalls suck. Nothing can beat hardware.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Salo]

Tech/security pings.

[StarCMC]

Any thoughts on this???

[martin_fierro]

I don't know anything about it, but did enjoy once watching Robert X. Cringely® come completely unglued while trying to build his own airplane on PBS.

[TommyDale]

There is no place like 127.0.0.1

[xcamel]

Veery Eeenteresting...

[jwh_Denver]

I don't know anything about this in particular but I've found most of the time anything "free" comes with strings attached. It could be your email address is sold 4 billion times, you might get a spy, etc. Problem is that you don't know what you'll be getting as the string.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

All I know is that I've used ZA and Adaware in the past and had nothing but trouble with my PC. In May I had to reformat my hard drive. Since removing both and cleaning out the junk, everything is working fine.

[sageb1]

"Does anyone know more about this?"

Nope. I've had the freebie ZA since 2000. When I had dial-up, way back when, I could watch hit attempt alerts coming in all day through Zone Alarm. I like Zone Alarm. No problems with it and decent software protection.

[tiger-one]

You should have used Ad-Aware, not Adaware..

Adaware is "spyware" I had the experience

[DJ MacWoW]

ping

[GummyIII]

Well, I purposely don't upgrade everything as soon as the new upgrades come out just for this reason. I don't doubt this is true, and now that they've been outed, they'll "fix" it for the time-being. Of course, the author touted an easy fix. I can actually understand the freeware containing this "bug", but if one pays for the whole she-bang, then I think one should not have to worry about being watched. Having said that, don't do anything on a computer you don't want others to know. It's hard to hide.

[palmer]

Software firewalls suck. Nothing can beat hardware.

I build all my firewalls out of 7400 Quad NANDs.

[lysie]

For later.

[Varmint Al]

This is the way to go with a Hardware firewall.

Good Hunting... from Varmint Al

[hiredhand]

No necessarilly. Free in the MS Windows world often means strings attached. But not in my world. :-)

[Drango]

GEEK ALERT!

If I can thread poach a little... I know some of the people on this thread are already "FOLDING" but for those who aren't, there is now a major project by FReepers and others regarding protein folding and distributed computing. The effort is dedicated to Ronald Reagan.

http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=36120

FReepers are ranked nationally (almost top 400) in our efforts to help this massive science project. Please join us if you would like to contribute and "Fold one for the Gipper". Here is one of several threads that can help point you to start donating your unused CPUs if you are interested.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1562606/posts

Callin' all GEEKS!

[JOE43270]

I don't want anyone to think I don't feel that this could cause anyone of us problems. I'm into amateur radio also and there are many out there listening including me. Get the best equipment that you can afford and feel comfortable with. Then pay attention to your computer and do all the checks regular. I've had problems with my internet connection that they were being to protective with PDF files on Adobe Reader and I couldn't download things. I found away around them and things work fine. Something could happen to my computer and I'll have to deal with it. Just my thoughts and good luck to you all. Good luck with avoiding the bad guys.