TSGL: Info on Armor Personal Firewall + ZA problems

Wed Dec 19 20:56:15 EST 2007

Tilman,

You may not have to go back to ZA v4.5. I've been using ZA v6.5.737 with 
the latest AVG, v7.5.503, on an XP SP2 system with all updates for some 
time now (more than a year) with no problems. I recently updated with 
the MS December updates with no problems. I use Thunderbird for my 
e-mail client.

H Davis

Tilman Brandl wrote:
> 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
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>
>   

-- 
H Davis   hdavis1 at gmail.com