Am I the only one who doesn't trust ZA free?

I've read in at least one place that I trust and possibly a number of others that the engine that ZA free uses is a vastly cut down one to ZA pro.

For example in leak tests alone it performs abysmally against its paid for brother. See Leak-tests results - matousec.com and scroll across to the extreme right and compare.

For those that don't want to go to an external link it basically says:

ZA Free failed 20 out of 26 leak tests
ZA Pro failed just 2.

That's some difference and makes the free version highly untrustworthy - yet people still talk about how good it is.

As I say - is this just me?

ZoneAlarm Free's main purpose is to protect users from outbound attacks, nothing more, nothing less.

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That was not the point I was trying to make.

My point, dragged down to basics, is that most places I read of the rave reviews of ZA free when compared against other free firewalls, when it is actually very poor. However I believe most folks actually mean ZA Pro when they talk about how good it is.

Now on to your point - if ZA free is only meant to protect from outbound attacks (where on their site does it say this?) then why does it so miserably fail the leak tests pointed at in my prior posting? Leaks are outbound attacks surely?

I use Comodo Firewall Pro (Free)

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I think that I was pretty vague just now etoad. While I am no expert on software firewalls, allow me to give my opinion.

What I wanted to say just now (but failed terribly now that I had a better look at it myself), is that ZoneAlarm Free is meant to do network level filtering primarily. There is still outbound application filtering, or software filtering. But this feature is limited in the free version. Leaktests focus on exactly this part.

How are leaktests actually conducted? The user downloads an exploit from a website, saves it and allows it to be executed. Between this process, there should be an anti-virus or anti-spyware program with real time protection protesting straight away. But in a leaktest, such warnings are deliberately ignored in order for the leaktest to proceed. This is of course not very probable in a real situation. Then finally, the firewall will alert the user of a new program trying to initiate a connection to outside. If the user allows the new connection, then any firewall would be useless, not excluding ZoneAlarm.


Please do not hesitate to correct me if I'm wrong.

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I think you have likely hit the nail on the head there with that world should - it says a lot.

Indeed and as you seem to hint at they are likely done without the usual life saving aids most sensible folks employ on a windows based system.

I know the results I pointed to were purely for leak tests but that was partially beacuse I couldn't quickly find the actual firewall tests themselves - at least not in pretty graph format and my main aim was to challenge the seeming blind acceptance of once good always good line of thinking.

I'll be the last in that queue to correct anyone unless I'm 130% certain.

Agreed.

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