TSGL: Info on Armor Personal Firewall + ZA problems

[Tilman Brandl]

Hi,

maybe Scot's Newsletter is a good addition here for those who are interested 
in more details on OA and other Fws

http://blog.scotsnewsletter.com/2007/11/25/93/ with an Online Armor account
http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=79259814&pid=r&mode=ALL&n=0&query=firewall 
has a LOT of links to Scot's articles re. firewalls.

http://www.matousec.com/projects/windows-personal-firewall-analysis/leak-tests-results.php 
the Matousec page with a comparison table for 2 dozen or so FWs


Something distantly related: Unfortunately I have FW problems myself now.
A day ago I installed a few Win XP SP2 updates, then I also removed my free 
ZA v. 4.5 (or similar) protection and stepped it up to v.7.0.362.0. Shortly 
after when I tried to fetch my email, I ran into trouble. The download 
stopped with email 3 of 9, nothing could get it to continue. After searching 
the web for any kind of related information I switched off ZA, replacing it 
by XPs FW (no outbound protection!). Didn't really help, therefore I 
switched back to ZA 7 and disabled my free AVG virusprotection. Just 
switching off email-checking had had no effect, but quitting had one - thing 
were back to normal. I haven't seen any virus since .. I guess a few years 
ago. Anyway, I would like to solve this. Problem is that I have no idea 
whether perhaps anything coming with Win updates has triggered this. One 
should never change two things at the same time ;-(

Seems the times when I ran AVG together with ZA w/o any problems is petering 
out after several years. But before this my last idea is to revert to good 
old ZA 4.5.... Has anybody of you tried this? Guess I would have to 
thoroughly clean my PC from all remnants of the new version before 
re-installing v. 4.5. ? OTOH - since the free ZA is rated quite badly, I 
wonder where to move on eventually.

Tilman

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mike Ferrell
  To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
  Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 8:07 PM
  Subject: Re: TSGL: More Info on Armor Personal Firewall


  Don,
  I also noticed the association with some commercial interests, and that
  caused some concern, but I believe they offered some explanation.  And I,
  too, didn't know what leak testing means.  Perhaps that's only one of the
  factors that should be looked at when analyzing firewalls.  That's one
  reason I wanted TSGL members to look things over and comment.

  Likewise, I saw the comments, ""We have removed the latest results of 
Online
  Armor from our tables .  We will retest Online Armor and publish its real
   leak-testing results as soon as possible...".  However, if you go back 
and
  look closely, I believe those comments were dated earlier than the final
  publication which came after retests.  I could be wrong, but that's how it
  appeared to me.

  Anyway, I merely wanted others to offer up any comments about the tests,
  ratings, and firewalls in general.  I guess we can't come to any definite
  conclusions on the subject, but it's been interesting.  I'm sure we will 
all
  keep looking for that perfect firewall, wherever it is.
  Mike


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: "Don Penlington" <deepend at tpg.com.au>
  To: "Tech Support Guy Mailing List" <list at tsgserver.com>
  Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2007 11:21 AM
  Subject: Re: TSGL: More Info on Armor Personal Firewall


  > Mike wrote:
  >>which provided a link to the study by Matousec.com.>>
  >
  >
  > I had a look at that site with some interest. Any review site with
  > associated referral commercial interests---which this obviously is, is
  > unlikely in my view to be completely impartial.  That conclusion may, of
  > course, be completely unjustified. But---hey---CA is the "most popular 
a-v
  > software"???? Just who are we kidding? I can't swallow that one.
  >
  > Interesting to see that his a-v reviews are of paid programs only. Maybe
  > the free ones don't pay any commission for sales.  Perish the
  > thought---quite ungentlemanly of me.
  >
  > I see that firewalls are rated (only?) on "leak testing"---whatever that
  > is. I'm not sure about it's real-world relevance. I thought significant
  > memory leaks were largely a thing of the past.
  >
  > And I also noted that "We have removed the latests results of Online 
Armor
  > from our tables ...We will retest Online Armor and publish its real
  > leak-testing results as soon as possible. We apologize to all our 
visitors
  > and to all competitive vendors for publishing incorrect results of 
Online
  > Armor. "
  >
  > Well, at least he's frank about it.
  >
  > All in all, an interesting site, but one I'd have some reservations 
about.
  >
  > I looked back at an earlier issue of APC, Australia's premier computer
  > magazine, and their firewall tests from a few months ago rated Zone 
Alarm
  > up with the best.
  >
  > Don Penlington