>>>>Inline replies:
Likewise

>ZA issued an announcement at one of their forums:
>http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs
>where it says clearly what is the thing about;

>>>Of course the one accused will claim innocence. We need third party verification.

Doesn't it make more sense for a serious software company (as ZA seems to be) if they get caught doing something wrong, to recognize the mistake and make the corrections necessary other that exposing themselves to get sued ? They didn’t do that, instead they have this privacy policy that you can read at
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/privacy.jsp


>I personally did not experience things as described in the article posted as a link on the Universal Thread frontpage, such as those dlls remaining in my system after uninstalling ZA, nor was able to find that rdb file (google desktop does not find it) on a system using ZA.

>>>>The rdb file exists on my machine in C:\WINDOWS\Internet Logs and is 2Mg in size. The dll files I did not check since I have not yet uninstalled ZA. But this is not the real issue. The issue is what ZA is transmitting.

Some things don’t work as described in the article, at least for me.
After you uninstall ZA, does the file still exist? Did you try to uninstall ZA at all? I did, and those files are gone from that system.

>Besides, although recently posted on the Universal Thread and other places, that article is so outdated (Oct 2005), that still refers to that firewall as Sygate, which does not exist anymore since it was acquired by Symantec back in November 2005.

>>>>>>This fact does not detract from the possible truth of the claims made. I have seen similar articles in other places but had not book marked them so I provided a link to what was readily available. The age of the article does not in itself determine the truth or not of the claims made.

True, but some facts may not be accurate anymore. The article recommends a product that does not exist anymore and another has taken over its place. How many who read that article jumped to the sygate web site to get that software? I think many did so, only to find out that the best you could get was Norton Firewall. Isn't that misleading?

Besides, have you checked if the thing was resolved, or what was the ZA response? This is what I was trying to point out: people reading an outdated article about alleged malicious software, and without further ado, they wipe it off their systems.

It is the misinformation what I have a problem with, the only real fact that you should be relatively worried about is the following from http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs :

“….We do currently have an issue where ZoneAlarm continues to ping a server when in fact a user has asked it to be disabled. It will be fixed as soon as possible…..”

The result of these actions are harmful for ones involved, because in the belief they did something good, they just removed their firewall protection.

>I think that here is nothing wrong with ZA, until someone REALLY proves it.

>>>>>Well the article given has made a claim with some specific points that you can investigate and verify for yourself. I will install Kerio personal firewall on my machine today alongside ZA and see what happens :) If I have set ZA to *not* check for updates and it connects to the net then something is very suspect.

Ah ah, no such “points”, as it says on http://forum.zonelabs.org/zonelabs

“…..The actual communication in dispute is a simple encrypted GET request that is checking to see if the user’s security software is current. We will continue to work with Mr. Borck and anyone else who might have any concerns about this issue…..”

Nevertheless, share with us the results if you don't mind, I guess you are going to find the same as described before.

> And yes, you are going to see a lot of weird things being transmitted if you use a firewall,

>>>>>That does not make sense iro things being transmitted. Other than the personal firewall checking for updates it should not transmit anything to the outside world whatsoever. That is not the function of a firewall. If you tell it to not auto check for updates then what is it doing? If it is transmitting then one must know what that transmission is.

I should’ve added to my writing “…if you have the software to check for updates automatically”, and by weird I meant ‘encrypted’, gosh I am bad at this.

> ...so you have to trust what the vendor says, nothing makes me believe that ZA is less respectable than Norton, or anyone else.

>>>>>The possibility that other vendors may be equally bad (or more so) brings me no comfort. The Sony debacle, the DoubleClick lies, the controversy surrounding the Windows wmf "backdoor" claims by Steve Gibson and others, etc, etc, etc, shows us that apparently companies time and again cannot resist these temptations to spy on and collect stats and demographics on their customers ...

Oh no, you've got me wrong on this, I was supposing the majority of them that have been long out there are reliable.