Zonealarm – Free Firewall

Friday, October 30th, 2009 (No comments yet)

As free firewalls go, Zonealarm works well. Go to their website and look for the nearly hidden link titled 'I only want basic Zonealarm protection' (avoid anything that says "Trial"). Run the installation and follow the directions making sure to uncheck any boxes for optional software like the Yahoo! toolbar or such.

Once installed, it will run a minimal setup procedure. Take the default settings, but one tip is to not let it set up your programs for you. What this means is that for a little while, you'll be constantly harassed by programs asking for permission to access the Internet, but that's what you want.

Look at each program that's trying to get online and decide if it should. Even otherwise legitimate software like Windows Media Player will try to connect to the Internet for part of it's functionality that no one I know uses or wants. Use your new firewall to be able to use software while also preventing it from getting online when it shouldn't.