The use of port 443/SSL/HTTPS implies the use of an encrypted channel over and above the probability that the content itself is encrypted. I understand this. A sniffer may still, however, yield useful information about what is being transmitted even so.


>Sniffer: One of the Internet news pages dedicated to this controversy says that encrypted information is sent. If this is true, that would make a sniffer quite useless; you would find out that, indeed, something is being sent, which you already know.
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>>So I installed Kerio personal firewall along with Zone Alarm and here is the result:
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>>ZA) When I started ZA (latest ver) Kerio PF reports that the ZA TrueVector service tries to connect to;
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>>1) 208.185.174.66 on port 80/http, (I tell Kerio to deny it)
>>2) then to 196.33.166.200 on port 80/http, (I tell Kerio to deny it)
>>3) then to 208.185.174.65 on port 443/https/SSL, (I tell Kerio to deny it)
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>>Thereafter ZA True Vector service is trying to connect to IP #3 every few minutes or so, maybe every 10 or 15 minutes. I tell Kerio PF to deny it just to see what will happen. ZA seems unaffected by the denials so far.
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>>I dont think these are the ZA update IP address' because "check for updates" was off. When I tell ZA to check for an update manually it tries to connect to 208.185.174.52 on port 80/http (different IP from above).
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>>I could put a sniffer on it to see what its trying to send/receive but I'm not that motivated right now :)
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>>KPF) When I started Kerio PF ZA reports various activities. ZA did also report that Kerio PF wanted to connect to the DNS server which I allowed in order to see what it would do but it didnt try another connection after that to any other IP (so far :). This is after a couple of hours of monitoring.
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>>My opinion fwiw - I have always been a fan of ZA but Kerio looks extremely good with many comparable features (and some others) and good user interface. And the price is excellent as well; US$15. I dont like the smoke currently around the ZA controversy and Kerio does not appear to be making internet connections whereas ZA definitely does (for purposes unknown to me).