Zone Alarm Firewall 8.0.065 review

Zone Alarm Firewall 8.0.065

by Johnny Karp 20 December 2008 19 Comments

Overview
Zone Alarm is the most popular free firewall program. That’s right, it’s free. No trial version, no 30 days, nothing. It just works.

Review
Many of you suggested I should try Zone Alarm. I finally did and I was quite happy with the results. The download and installation will be pretty quick, only a few minutes. During the install process you can register your copy by entering a valid email adress. If you don’t register you won’t be able to download updates, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.

After installing you will have a few hours or days of annoying pop-up windows from Zone Alarm asking you to set trusted programs and so on. But that will be over once the programs you run frequently are remembered by Zone Alarm.

Zone Alarm screenshot

I’m going to be honest with you: I don’t really see the point in using a firewall program. I think that it takes up a lot of memory for nearly nothing. If you really want protection you should get a router with a firewall and that would protect your system better.

But if we talk about Zone Alarm the good thing is that it doesn’t take up a lot of memory, only 2 to 4 MB. Well, I guess it can’t do much harm.

Version Tested

8.0.065

Author

www.zonealarm.com

Operating System

Windows All

Download link

Summary

It’s lightweight and easy to use.

I’m not sure it really does something beneficial for your PC.

Rating

Verdict

My first option would be no firewall at all. Zone Alarm would be my second simply because it’s free and lightweight.

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If you have any trouble with this software just leave a comment, I’ll help you out! If you know better free programs in the same category, please let me know!

19 Comments »

Dustin said:

The biggest benefit to having some kind of software firewall like ZoneAlarm is that you are warned when programs try to access the internet without your knowledge. This can help prevent an infestation on your computer by preventing malicious software from downloading more and more malicious software. It can also warn you if a program has changed since the last time it ran. That way if a virus altered some of your trusted software with the intent of downloading more malicious software, it would alert you that your program has changed.

I used ZoneAlarm for a long time before I realized that (for me) it didn’t really provide much benefit because I am generally very careful about what I install on my computer. But for someone who is more novice to the being online thing…it can be beneficial.

Another good thing to note – firewall software can do more harm than good for novices…you can inadvertently disallow something that you should have allowed and make things not work. But – worse comes to worse – you can always uninstall, reboot, and reinstall.

# 21 December 2008 at 3:14 am

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Dustin
Thanks for your comment. I really appreciate your effort and the time you spent to write it. Very informative and useful. I hope you’ll come back to comment on other posts too. Cheers.

# 22 December 2008 at 12:56 pm

Marco said:

Can you comment on whether ZoneAlarm 8.0 (free version) has any ads nagging you to upgrade to their paid version? Version 6.x did not, but version 7.x did, so I stopped recommending it to people after that.

# 1 January 2009 at 12:35 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Marco
I didn’t notice any ads in this version. It didn’t annoy me at all.

# 1 January 2009 at 1:55 pm

Rick said:

I used ZoneAlarm years ago but eventually switched to Sunbelt Personal Firewall. After a 30 day trial, Sunbelt asks you to pay for it but if you don’t, it still works but in a limited capacity. Even the limited version works fine. I have tested my PC on http://www.grc.com website using “ShieldsUP!” which I highly recommend to anyone to test the security of the ports on their PC . The main reason I switched from ZoneAlarm is the same reason you described in you article; “After installing you will have a few hours or days of annoying pop-up windows from Zone Alarm asking you to set trusted programs and so on.” Sunbelt didn’t have that. I work on friends and family computers and I made the mistake of installing ZoneAlarm for a friend (who is by most means is computer illiterate). I eventually started receiving phone call after phone call asking me if it was alright to allow this or that program access to the internet. I hope you can see how this could get redundant, especially if I installed it on more than one “illiterate” person’s computer. That’s just my opinion.

# 20 January 2009 at 12:11 am

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Rick
As I said, my first option would be no firewall at all. But I think that ZoneAlarm is quite OK, only those first few days require some attention. But I definitely understand your concern about your computer illiterate friends… That happened to me several times, sometimes my phone kept ringing for hours and hours. You have to be patient with them. You see, my once “illiterate” friends are no longer bothering me because I managed to make them learn a thing or two about computers, so now they can do stuff by themselves and only contact me if there is something really serious to solve.

# 20 January 2009 at 1:27 am

Bilgisayarınız İçin 72 Ücretsiz Yazılım | catlakses.com said:

[...] Zone Alarm – En güçlü ücretsiz firewall. Sistemi yormaz ve kolay kullanıma sahip. [...]

# 29 January 2009 at 10:06 pm

Das Fos said:

-Why Not Comodo or Online Armor Free?
According to Matousec,
these two (2) (i.e. Comodo and Online Armor Free)
offer the best Leak-Protection:
http://www.matousec.com/projects/firewall-challenge/results.php

# 11 February 2009 at 9:00 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Das Fos
Online Armor free looks interesting. Comodo is on the waiting list.

# 12 February 2009 at 10:39 am

Das Fos said:

PC Tools Firewall Plus 5.0.0.36 FREE is another option
you may want to evaluate.

# 12 February 2009 at 8:13 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

Thanks for the suggestions Das Fos.

# 12 February 2009 at 9:34 pm

jani said:

Hi.
I like your site.Because great reviews for programs. I m behind of NAT/SPI Router. Should i use software firewall?

Realtime protection now
Avira Antivir Personal 9
Sandboxie
Winpatrol

# 18 March 2009 at 7:08 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@jani
I guess it would be redundant to use a software firewall too.

# 20 March 2009 at 11:08 am

aziz said:

lam kenal..,saya udah download zona alarm di link diatas,tapi setelah saya coba untuk instal dikomputer koq g bisa…kenapa ya…?gimana dunk…….

# 14 April 2009 at 4:40 am

Johnny Karp (author) said:

@Aziz
English, please.

# 14 April 2009 at 9:20 am

Jenny said:

Interesting stuff

# 12 May 2009 at 11:31 pm

Jeff said:

China firewall is lame, use water to put out the fire of the wall but how do you get over the wall? – use Freedur.com to bypass it. You can bypass China Great Firewall and access youtube, facebook, blogger and all other sites which are blocked.

# 30 May 2009 at 12:54 am

karl said:

Have been using sunbelt personal ever sincé it was only kerio, and have liked it cause I was familiar with its settings and controls.

But lately, despite it being shown as still being in startup, I periodically discover that it’s simply not running anymore — no error message; no notice that it’s cut out; taskmanager and “what’s running” still list its startup or initiation files, but the icon is gone from the taskbar, AND those programs (or proceswses) which I have never told it to permanently allow (to remember) NO LONGER CAUSE SUNBELT TO ASK MY PERMISSION TO ALLOW THE ONE TO START THE OTHER PROCESS!!!
So I don’t know how long I’ve been surfing the internet with no firewall protection. I noticed, despite it’s being in the startup menu, that it was no longer starting at startup; so I added its initiation line to my autoexec.bat (which was otherwise empty in Win XP), and noticed that it did start up each time. But I suddenly notice, after the computer’s been running for several hours, that Sunbelt Personal firewall once again suddenly ISN’T running any longer!
–Anybody have any advice?

# 8 July 2009 at 11:49 pm

Johnny Karp (author) said:

Karl, did you try to uninstall the program and then install it again? If you did and it didn’t work I really don’t know what to say because I didn’t use this program so far. But if it doesn’t work just try another freeware alternative, there are a few nice ones available.

# 10 July 2009 at 8:19 am