I use Zone Alarm too, and it shuts itself down sometimes.  I just run it again when it does that.  Not sure what good these programs really are anyway, maybe they're of use to people with static IP addresses, but most folks have a different IP address every time they log on, so how any hacker is supposed to know you've just logged on I don't know (unless a trojan can act like an email program, give the computer it's on a special address, and contact the hacker similar to an email program, but in real time?).

 

Zone Alarm is pretty useless, it didn't stop an email reaching me recently with a virus attachment.  Thankfully Mark told us in advance to look out for emails with specific contents, which this one did (and I had another one today with a .pif attachment).  I guess you have to go to the Zone Alarm website and manually update it though on a regular basis (it is free).

 

A brand new virus or trojan can always sneak its way in, regardless of how up to date you keep your protection software.  No one is 100% safe.  But I still use Zone Alarm just in case lol, maybe you could go to the ZA website and update it.

I think most of these supposed high risk attacks are an exaggeration by the security software company, to make their product appear much more useful than it really is lol, if you had someone genuinely trying to hack into it though it surely must come in useful, I hope.  I'd bet genuine hacks are extremely rare though.  For example - if we had a real hacker of any quality visiting KW for example, they would have pinched someones email address and password to log into KW using the same number as the real person does in there, so no one would know any different.  I don't know whether this has happened before in there, but I've never seen it or heard of it.

 

The folks trying to "attack" your computer? who are they? I don't know, companies perhaps?, trying to find out personal info for their own commercial gain? how do they do it? I think every time you visit a website, the website can use cookies to obtain info about you via your browser (I think) am I right Ma®k?

One other thought - maybe whenever someone obtains one of these software firewalls, how do we know whether or not it is the software firewall manufacturer deliberately "attacking" them, to make their own product seem more constantly effective.  Genuine "attacks" could be a lot less frequent, but if the firewall company attack your machine every few minutes, it sure makes it look more worth while having (just a theory)

Thanks for all the info Mark

 

Not sure how well this is known, but whenever anyone logs into Knowhere, it generates a file with the chatters email address and password, and places it in the chatters webcache.  My theory on this was - if say, a hacker was using a trojan, all they would need to do is look at the chatters webcache, and bingo, there's the email address and password (check your webcache when you use it, not very good from Knowhere).  Once they've obtained the email address and password, they could use it to impersonate their victim in the chat room if they wished (which to my knowledge has never happened, just folks invading email accounts).  I personally suggest to anyone chatting in Knowhere to clear your webcache once you've finished with a session in there, or even clearing it as soon as you're in (that may still work fine).  Why this file is generated I don't know