John Wilson wrote:
Seems to me that placing any faith in out-of-date firewalls is quite a dangerous trick. You would rely on threat data weeks, or even months, old?
If you use the Pro version of ZoneAlarm, then there might be some validity your statements above. That is because it has a SPAM detector which does need constant updates, just like SpyBot, Ad-Aware, etc... But the FREE version of ZoneAlarm that used to run on Windows-98, which recently (on 06/16/06) was no longer being upgraded, does not need constant "DAT" type files like the detectors of spyware and virus scanners. The actual updates that came out with ZoneAlarm were very sparse, maybe once every 3 to 5 months on the average. The last one for the Win-98 version came out on 03/28/2006, before that it was on 11/22/2005. Therefore, the firewall still has its uses on older Windows systems. Sincerely, P.N.L. ------------------------------------------------- http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/PNL_Fractals.html http://www.Nahee.com/Fractals/