ZoneAlarm Employs Scare Tactics Against Its Users

snydeq writes "Check Point Software appears to be ripping a page from the 'scum it claims to fight,' running a scare-tactic warning dialog to frighten users into upgrading to a paid version of the company's ZoneAlarm firewall product. Preying on fears of ZeuS.Zbot, the Check Point warning dialog tells users their PCs 'may be in danger' without having found ZeuS.Zbot, nor having checked to see whether you're running an antivirus product. 'The program doesn't care if you're infected with ZeuS.Zbot, or if you have protection in place. It just wants to sell you an upgrade to the firewall that may or may not detect future ZeuS.Zbot variants' activities — some day.' Check Point's customers have inundated the ZoneAlarm forums with complaints."

Comments

ZoneAlarm still exists?

[Khyber]

I haven't used that piece of garbage software in about 5 years.

Trusted

[Psychotria]

Well, they fooled me at first because I've had ZoneAlarm installed for ages and trusted it. After looking through my running processes, registry, etc, and doing a virus scan I suspected something was dodgy because there was no indication of this zeus trojan. It was then I found the big list of complaints on ZoneAlarm's forums. I was a bit annoyed that they wasted my time. Until yesterday when this showed up I had no reason no to trust what ZoneAlarm was telling me. Now, I am not so sure.

Backfire after management change

[flydpnkrtn]

As a poster indicates, ZA was bought out by CheckPoint a few months ago. This scare tactic will probably backfire on them...

Why in the hell did someone at CheckPoint say to themselves "Wait a second... Gestapo style marketing that looks like a phishing scam sounds like a great idea!"

Summary is correct

[cerberusss]

The summary is spot on. I haven't been a Windows user for a number of years, but a friend asked me to fix her malware problem and I reinstalled her Windows XP box. For the firewall, I remembered ZoneAlarm from a few years ago and installed it. After the first reboot, some stupid popup appeared, prompting me to "like" the software on Facebook. I'm like WTF? But still gave them the benefit of the doubt. Next reboot it comes up with the totally bogus popup that I may get infected with Zeus. I had to reread it twice to find out it really was an advertisement.

I downloaded Comodo, unplugged the network, uninstalled ZoneAlarm, installed Comodo and plugged back into the inter webs. Never looked back.

I probably will not buy any Check Point software for my business either.

Zounds! ZoneAlarm zealous about Zeus.Zbot?

[Culture20]

Whatever happened to alliteration in article titles?

List of free Windows firewalls

[Aryeh Goretsky]

Hello,

Below is a list of free application software firewalls I put together a while ago. Not sure if they are all current, and I am probably missing quite a few, but it is a starting point.

Firewalls
Active Network - Active Wall Free Edition
Agnitum - Outpost Firewall Free
AS3 Soft4U - AS3 Personal Firewall
Ashampoo - Ashampoo Firewall Free
Comodo Group - Comodo Firewall (now a part of Comodo Internet Security)
FilSecLab - Filseclab Personal Firewall Professional Edition
Group 4 Business Intelligence - IDNWebShield (main web site down when last checked)
NetVeda - NetVeda SafetyNet
PC Tools - PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition
PrivacyWare - Privatefirewall
SecurePoint - Securepoint Personal Firewall & VPN Client - (discontinued?)
SoftPerfect - SoftPerfect Personal Firewall
Tall Emu - Online Armor Free - (acquired by EmsiSoft?)
WIPFW Project - WIPFW - (port of BSD IPFW)

Firewall Managers
GT Delphi Components - Windows Firewall Ports & Applications Manager (WFWPAM)
Sheesley, Eric - XPFiremon

Hopefully, this is of help.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky