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ZoneAlarm is a software firewall produced by Zone Labs. It includes an inbound intrusion detection system, as well as the ability to control which programs can create outbound connection — the latter is not included in the Windows XP Service Pack 2 firewall. In ZoneAlarm, program access is controlled by way of "zones" which the computer's network connections are divided up into. The "trusted zone" generally includes the user's local area network and can share resources such as files and printers, while the "Internet zone" includes everything not in the trusted zone. The user can specify which "permissions" (trusted zone client, trusted zone server, Internet zone client, Internet zone server) to give to a program before it attempts to access the Internet (e.g. before running it for the first time) or, alternatively, ZoneAlarm will ask the user to give the program permission on its first access attempt. In 2006 Q3, Zone Labs announced that ZoneAlarm will no longer be supported on the Windows 98 and Me operating systems, starting with version 6.5. The company stated that Microsoft's announced end of the Extended Support phase (provision of essential security fixes) for Windows 98 and Me was the reason for this decision. It has been reported by many users on the Zone Labs User Forum that issues have arisen with version 6.5 of the Internet Security Suite and Windows Live Messenger. Currently Zone Labs is working on the next version.
Versions Discontinued versions Version 6.0 spyware controversy In 2006, InfoWorld Senior Contributing Editor James Borck discovered that ZoneAlarm Security Suite 6.0 continued to send encrypted data to four servers even after the user had disabled all of ZoneAlarm's communications options. Zone Labs have since posted a press release on their website, giving instructions for users to disable the covert communications while warning that no personal information is shared and disabling this aspect of the program will weaken security. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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