The ZoneAlarm lets you know when servers are trying to establish a connection and YOU give the OK for them. It is worth keeping for that. You could have an email that starts a service or click on a button on a page that does the same thing.

I have used ZA for over a year now and love it. I try to get in from work and I can't see the blasted thing.

Running Nabster somtimes it's great that it works but you still can't ping it.

__Stephen

>>>By default the Linksys has every port disabled. I only enabled port 80.
>>
>>While we're on the subject, check out http://grc.com/default.htm. The ShieldsUp tool may surprise you (though it won't surprise Zone Alarm users). I found it to be a big help in setting up Proxy Server.
>
>Been there, done that. I got the initial surprise, then closed off everything. The linksys router has been great for that as well as the Zonealarm. I did run his Optout program again last week, and there were a couple of offending dlls sitting on my hard drive. I promptly removed them. For those who don't know Optout scans your hard drives for know programs that will send your information to sites over the internet w/o your knowledge.