ZoneAlarm Support have to be the biggest tossers about....
Discussion
About 6 months ago, I needed a new Internet security suite. So after rave reviews and recommendations, I purchased a copy of ZA Internet Security Suite. Seemed a bargain for €50.
As time went on, and the software got upgraded to 6.5.xx, I began having no end of problems with programs getting totally blocked and worse still, MSN no longer worked with their latest (current release).
So I wrote them an email and 2 weeks later, no reply. So I tried to call them. I was placed on hold for 20 minutes and then I gave up.
Finally, I found their support forum and posted my concerns. Instead of helping me, the "gurus" and moderators ignored my plea for help so I started another thread entitled "When can we expect a patch for the MSN issue?". I was astonished to find I had 100+ replies from about 60 different users with the same problem and all totally pissed off too with ZoneLabs.
Even with this great support, we were ignored so I called again. This time, 40 minutes and then the phone hung up on me.
Finally, I posted on the thread how incompetant ZA were and they resembled a bunch of kids running a lemonade stand.
About 3 days later, I was banned from the ZA forum with all my topics removed and the giant complaints thread (now up to 200+ posts with EVERYONE complaining), removed.
I found this totally pathetic a company would have to resort to hiding people complaining about their product!!! Totally sad and I decided from this point on, I would no longer use ZA.
I've moved on to the extinct but still excellent firewall from Sygate and am using Avast Antivirus. Not only have I noticed my computer now runs faster, but MSN now works perfectly.
So....moral is....if anyone is thinking of using ZA, think again. And those people who are using ZA, I highly recommend you go elsewhere if you start having problems because once they have your money, they don't give a shit!
Rant over!
As time went on, and the software got upgraded to 6.5.xx, I began having no end of problems with programs getting totally blocked and worse still, MSN no longer worked with their latest (current release).
So I wrote them an email and 2 weeks later, no reply. So I tried to call them. I was placed on hold for 20 minutes and then I gave up.
Finally, I found their support forum and posted my concerns. Instead of helping me, the "gurus" and moderators ignored my plea for help so I started another thread entitled "When can we expect a patch for the MSN issue?". I was astonished to find I had 100+ replies from about 60 different users with the same problem and all totally pissed off too with ZoneLabs.
Even with this great support, we were ignored so I called again. This time, 40 minutes and then the phone hung up on me.
Finally, I posted on the thread how incompetant ZA were and they resembled a bunch of kids running a lemonade stand.
About 3 days later, I was banned from the ZA forum with all my topics removed and the giant complaints thread (now up to 200+ posts with EVERYONE complaining), removed.
I found this totally pathetic a company would have to resort to hiding people complaining about their product!!! Totally sad and I decided from this point on, I would no longer use ZA.
I've moved on to the extinct but still excellent firewall from Sygate and am using Avast Antivirus. Not only have I noticed my computer now runs faster, but MSN now works perfectly.
So....moral is....if anyone is thinking of using ZA, think again. And those people who are using ZA, I highly recommend you go elsewhere if you start having problems because once they have your money, they don't give a shit!
Rant over!
To be honest if you have XP-SP2 and just need a basic firewall.... use the one built in to Windows. It's not perfect nor is it wonderfully configurable to understand multiple networks and such, but I run WAMP on my laptop and XP's been told to block it, nobody can access my little webserver.
ZA is a good product but I'm discovering it has far to many 'gotchas' and can be a right pig if it decides randomly that you shall not pass. I am actually shocked that their support is so shoddy for a paying customer though... that's just wow.
ZA is a good product but I'm discovering it has far to many 'gotchas' and can be a right pig if it decides randomly that you shall not pass. I am actually shocked that their support is so shoddy for a paying customer though... that's just wow.
thepassenger said:
To be honest if you have XP-SP2 and just need a basic firewall.... use the one built in to Windows.
Yeah - why not use the one piece of software that's probably been targetted by 99% of the world's hackers?
, even though... thepassenger said:
It's not perfect
Have to say, in many years of ZA usage (free version!) I've not encountered many problems at all and none that couldn't be solved by looking at the settings carefully.
Unfortunately with my case, the only way to get MSN working again was to hack into the program and totally disable the IM Secure feature. not exactly ideal as this leave you open to attack with any instant messenger client.
In order to do the hack, I had to boot into safe mode and physically delete and modify ZA XML files.
This isn't exactly what I pay my money for and frankly, even this suggestion wasn't offered by the tech support. In fact, one guru told me to sit back and wait for a fix. (It's been 2 months since the last program update).
Total bunch of muppets. Never, never again. Even Microsoft and Symantec provided me with better support than this.
In order to do the hack, I had to boot into safe mode and physically delete and modify ZA XML files.
This isn't exactly what I pay my money for and frankly, even this suggestion wasn't offered by the tech support. In fact, one guru told me to sit back and wait for a fix. (It's been 2 months since the last program update).
Total bunch of muppets. Never, never again. Even Microsoft and Symantec provided me with better support than this.
pdV6 said:
beanbag said:
It's been 2 months since the last program update
Odd, I've had 2 program updates for the freebie version in the last 2 months.
Very odd, but then again I used the security suite which is different as it has a lot more built into it.
http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free
Last release was June 20th (6.5.722.000).
pdV6 said:
thepassenger said:
To be honest if you have XP-SP2 and just need a basic firewall.... use the one built in to Windows.
Yeah - why not use the one piece of software that's probably been targetted by 99% of the world's hackers?
, even though...Because it does what it says it'll do on the box, costs nothing and generally works quite well?
It'll stop most of the worms that are on the internet, also deals with the annoying Messenger (not MSN) spam trying to sell you crap. Considering how infested the LAN at IBM was, I never picked up anything untoward using SP2's firewall.
I realise that it's behaviour can be controlled by ActiveX so not using IE removes that risk and also neatly gets around most other spyware/malware installs as well.
pdV6 said:
thepassenger said:
It's not perfect
Have to say, in many years of ZA usage (free version!) I've not encountered many problems at all and none that couldn't be solved by looking at the settings carefully.
Not perfect in that IE can disable/modify it's settings is what I meant.
ZA is one of those things where it either works flawlessly forever or goes bang in a big way. It's also fun if you uninstall whilst the ohh what is it called? TruVector? engine is still running.
Again not perfect but I do use it when XP-SP2 is unavaliable.
beanbag said:
pdV6 said:
beanbag said:
It's been 2 months since the last program update
Odd, I've had 2 program updates for the freebie version in the last 2 months.
Very odd, but then again I used the security suite which is different as it has a lot more built into it.
http://download.zonelabs.com/bin/free
Last release was June 20th (6.5.722.000).
Very interesting. The freebie latest release is 6.5.731.000 (12th July 2006)
It seems that they're updating the free one more often than the paid one?
pdV6 said:
thepassenger said:
To be honest if you have XP-SP2 and just need a basic firewall.... use the one built in to Windows.
Yeah - why not use the one piece of software that's probably been targetted by 99% of the world's hackers? , even though...
Because it does what it says it'll do on the box, costs nothing and generally works quite well?
It'll stop most of the worms that are on the internet, also deals with the annoying Messenger (not MSN) spam trying to sell you crap. Considering how infested the LAN at IBM was, I never picked up anything untoward using SP2's firewall.
I realise that it's behaviour can be controlled by ActiveX so not using IE removes that risk and also neatly gets around most other spyware/malware installs as well.
My point was that as most everybody has XP firewall installed, there will naturally be more effort spent on trying to crack it. I wouldn't put my faith in any MS security product purely for that reason.
I admit that this may be slightly unfair, but having said that I've never had an intrusion in 4+ years of having broadband and ?? years of dialup before that - all on ZoneAlarm.
The XP firewall is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard, so if it's easy to use that's *one* thing going for it. Zone Alarm is one of the most secure firewalls in terms of being resistant to attempts to fool it into allowing outgoing connections by applications that have been tampered with or not approved. It doesn't seem to be perfectly reliable, but my experience with the rfee version has been pretty good on the whole. Luckily I haven't had to use the ZA support, I'd be pretty hacked off if I'd paid and then got the level of support that you did.
Whilst I can understand people looking rather skeptically at the XP-SP2 firewall remember this:
Even an invalid carriage driven by an utter tonk is a danger to other road users.
Ultimatley though its personal preferance as to which products you use, so long as you use it and don't do what I've seen people do: wildly click the 'accept' button just to make it go away... you'll be fine.
Personally I wouldn't trust ANY Windows based firewall solution as far as I could spit because it's running on the biggest bag of hammers in the software world lol. Now the iptables machine we've got running NAT/Firewall duties is a different story
Even an invalid carriage driven by an utter tonk is a danger to other road users.
Ultimatley though its personal preferance as to which products you use, so long as you use it and don't do what I've seen people do: wildly click the 'accept' button just to make it go away... you'll be fine.
Personally I wouldn't trust ANY Windows based firewall solution as far as I could spit because it's running on the biggest bag of hammers in the software world lol. Now the iptables machine we've got running NAT/Firewall duties is a different story
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