>Ok, what holes and what kind of trucks. How is Zone alarm better? I am not pro anything I would like to know what to look for. I down loaded the testleak program and ran it here at work. To be honest it was not informitive. It said that our firewall allowed us to contact its ip address. Why is that important? I believe you I just would like a bit more than just your word on the issue.
>TIA
>Bruce

The TestLeak program simulates a virus/worm such as BackOrifice trying to contact it's designer and allow control over your computer. Personal firewalls can prevent those.

The problem with Norton's is that there is a list of pre-approved applications that Norton will not try to stop. Among those are known spyware. Also, a worm can just rename itself to one of those and will pass right through without your knowledge.

This is where ZoneAlarm has an advantage. First, there are no pre-approved application list. Second, even if a worm renames itself for a user-approved application, ZA checks the CRC of the file, so that if that file changed, you will be asked weither you want to let the application do it's job.

Of course, if you just say "Yes, allow Internet access", then you have approved that application/worm/virus/other to do it's job! Nothing's perfect! :)

I think Norton's default behavior can be changed, but the problem in my opinion is that the default behavior is flawed, and therefore an unknowing user would think he is protected, while he's not.