AboutCarolyn Meinel Expertise I cover Windows, Unix, TCP/IP and Ethernet security questions. I do not cover Mac, Palm Pilot, or other networking issues.
Experience Books by Carolyn Meinel: wrote a chapter for The Hacking of America book (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567204600/happyhacker)
My article Code Red for the Web for Scientific American was reprinted in the book Best American Science Writing 2002 (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060936509/happyhacker). My book The Happy Hacker: A Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking is now in 4th edition with a Japanese edition (see http://happyhacker.org/hhbook/).
Question Hello,
I'm upgrading from Windows 98SE to Windows XP Professional. I know that XP comes with its own firewall, so do I still need zonealarm?
Angel,
Answer Zone Alarm Pro is super useful even if you have the XP firewall.
Here's why I've found that Zone Alarm Pro works better for me than the XP firewall alone. Zone Alarm alerts you whenever you install a new program and it tries to access the Internet. It includes an expert adviser feature that will tell you what the experts say about whether you should allow that program to access the Internet. However, it doesn't have advice for every program, so in some cases you just have to use your own judgment. What I do if I'm not certain whether I want to let a new program access the Internet, I block it for now and then if this causes a problem I unblock it.
The other useful thing Zone Alarm does is when a program begins to install, Zone Alarm alerts you to this and asks if you want to allow the installation. Most of the dangerous programs try to secretly install themselves. So if Zone Alarm tells you a program is installing and you didn't begin the installation yourself, you can use Zone Alarm to make it stop.
