Hello everyone,

 

Today, I want to focus on the importance of having a good firewall protecting your PC.

 

As you likely know, hackers can get into computers whose ports are unprotected/unblocked by a firewall.  Hackers can certainly do a lot of nasty things to your PC if they can get into your system, including causing havoc to your software programs and operating system, steal and/or delete files off your PC, and steal important sensitive information, such as social security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and more.

 

ZoneAlarm Free is the firewall program I use to block hackers from hacking into my system; while you may be skeptical of a free product being able to protect your system that well, I can tell you that ZoneAlarm Free does.  

 

It has many useful features, including what "strength level" you want your firewall to have, whether it should block out virtually everything (High) or only the most obvious threats (Low.)  It also gives you the ability to stop all Internet traffic entering or leaving your computer with a click of your mouse button.  It also gives you the ability to designate websites as being "safe" - you just input the URL under the "Firewall" section of the program. 

 

There is a paid version known as "ZoneAlarm Pro" that allows you to monitor your antivirus software to make sure it's working properly, as well as give you more direct protection against more types of viruses (besides .vbs extensions that are included in the Free version.)  However, for a while, some said that the Free version worked better than the Pro version; I'm not sure that that is still the case nowadays, but the Free version is still a very good alternative to not having a firewall at all.

 

In addition, the Free version is also considerably better than just having the Windows XP Firewall protecting you.  The reason why is because, the XP Firewall is tied directly into the registry; if a virus or malware program gets into the registry, it will likely affect everything
in the Registry, including the XP Firewall, so chances are that the XP Firewall will be neutralized, leaving your system totally vulnerable to attack. 

 

That is why it is SO important to have another firewall program protecting your system.  While you could pay a decent to expensive amount for a firewall software program like Norton or McAfee, ZoneAlarm has been reported to do just as good of a job as those paid firewall programs, and taking up fewer of your computer resources as well.  Therefore, why pay for Norton or McAfee when you can have ZoneAlarm for free from here: 

 

http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp

 

Realize that you can't use the free version for commercial purposes; it must be for individual use.

 

Also realize that you only need one firewall program to protect your system; if you use more than one firewall program on your system, you'll actually be getting less protection than if you just used one because each firewall program will try searching your system for any threats, but will come across the other firewall program in the process.  As a result, each firewall program will have gaps in its coverage, due to the other firewall program being present, and as a result, there will be gaps in your security.

 

Therefore, only use one firewall program; you can use that one program with the Windows XP Firewall - that won't cause a problem, but using ZoneAlarm with Norton or McAfee will actually give you less protection than if you used one of them alone. 

 

Therefore, consider downloading ZoneAlarm Free today and make sure your system is kept safe from hackers.

 

I hope this is helpful for you!  :-)

 

Take care and have a great day!

 

Sincerely,

 

Joe Chengery III