Am I at risk?

[Noel Johnson]

Hi all,

Apparently Zone labs are to no longer support the free firewall I use with them on Windows ME as it's getting a bit long in the tooth and in order to stay fully protected I need to upgrade to XP.

If I don't upgrade, money basically - I may as well buy a new computer - am I at risk of various nastyness or am I just being paranoid?

Cheers all,

Noel

[dry suit diver]

Originally Posted by Noel Johnson

Hi all,

Apparently Zone labs are to no longer support the free firewall I use with them on Windows ME as it's getting a bit long in the tooth and in order to stay fully protected I need to upgrade to XP.

If I don't upgrade, money basically - I may as well buy a new computer - am I at risk of various nastyness or am I just being paranoid?

Cheers all,

Noel

yes you would be surprised by the amount of 'port prodders' there are, there should be other free firewalls available for ME, although what you have will keep working fine forever, most of the 'upgrades' from Zone labs are just a new skin for the firewall.

[DIVE BUDDHA]

what software ya after noel ? pm me i should be able to point u the rite way ???

[SilvaFish]

I think he's after one called 'Zone Alarm'.

Got bored at work today and found this forum

Woody's Office Portal - wopr.com (click on 'Woody's Lounge' link)

The members have got a good knowledge base for computer-like stuff; check out the section on 'Spyware - Antivirus - Safe computing'.

[balbrigganbloke]

Try here theres a few firewalls available
Search results for firewall - Reviews and free downloads at Download.com
Hope this helps

[Harlequin]

Noel

Get a hardware firewall mate. That said, you could download a freebie version of Black Ice Defender, even their free version is the dogs danglies...!

[MattS]

I take it the program has not timed out and stopped working.

As long as it is still loading up it is still doing the same job you originally installed it to do. The basic function of a firewall is pretty simple and you don't usually need ongoing manufacturer support to stay protected. The lack of support means you will not get additions and bug fixes that's all.

There is tiny chance that someone will write a hack which specifically targets out of support versions of ZA. It's more a theoretical threat than a real one. In general attack risks drop significantly when an OS or application goes out of support due to the hackers moving along with the rest of the market.

The copy of Zone Alarm you have provides a higher level of protection than a cheap domestic hardware firewall will. The big attraction of hardware firewalls is that they are mainly config and forget. Once you have them programmed you rarely need to touch them and you are always protected. However many people neglect to program their hardware firewalls so have less protection than ZA or Windows Firewall provide in the default configurations.

Virus and malware (file) scanners are a completely different kettle of fish. When the manufacturer stops giving updates they become largely useless. Norton Anti Virus shipped as a try before you buy version on lots of new PCs. It went out of support 3 months later and loads of people ended up infected.

I would not worry about it. I think you need a better reason than this to upgrade your OS.

[mythic]

Humm i disagree My main job is a IT security consultant firewall and antivirus specilest. I advise my customers that their firewalls should remain uptodate. The firewall does basically stop traffic and allow only what you want but like any software people find ways round it hence the firewall then becomes useless !!.

My advice is to get yourself a nice hardware firewall and make sure you keep you machine patched and uptodate and run a fully uptodate antivirus program.

However i do agree you need more of a reason to update the os

Mythic