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knight · Joined: 22 Nov 2006 Posts: 19 Location: uk

hello, i have installed zone alarm pro firewall after using comodo for some time. the strange thing is that in 2 days it has stopped 1750 intrusions of which 260 have been high rated. is my system under attack or is this normal. zone alarm does not report any programs "phoning home" what do you think is going on, thanks in advance ken

NickAskew · Moderator Joined: 03 Nov 2006 Posts: 112 Location: Thirsk

Hi Ken,

Without knowing what types of intrusions have been blocked and what web sites you have been visiting, it would be hard to say whether you are 'under attack' or not - ZoneAlarm is good in that it provides a link next to each blocked attach which takes you to a help page with extra details about the particular 'attack' it stopped.

Some web sites attempt to 'ping' or send a tiny of packet of data to your pc to assist with keeping you logged in (to a forum, or secure website, or IRC chatting), this request tries to elicit a response from your computer - look at it as a hand wave, computer 1 (the web site you are browsing on) waves at computer 2 (your computer) and expects your computer to wave back - this is ranked as an 'attack' by ZoneAlarm because under some situations you do not want your computer to wave back.. because you are effectively telling the first computer that you computer is switched on and ready for attack! - however in this example, a ping would be a completely friendly thing to do as it is the means by which the web site you are connected to allows you to continue shopping or chatting or remaining logged in at.. so I would take the majority of warnings from ZA with a pinch of salt.

If you have no loss of functionality in any of your applications and web sites seem to operate ok for you (they save your login details when you ask them to, and don't when you ask them not to) then I wouldn't worry yourself about the messages ZoneAlarm is producing, just know that it is working hard to keep your computer out of the hands of bad people!

Cheers

Nick

knight · Joined: 22 Nov 2006 Posts: 19 Location: uk

hi nick,

thanks for the very informative reply, i beleive you have answered some queries for me in the past. my pc is working perfectly normally and i do not use chat rooms or go near dodgy sites. also win defender, avast virus checker and adaware report no problems. i have come to the conclusion that comodo firewall previously installed was doing the same job as ZA but not reporting the intrusions in such a precise way. hopefully i am sorted thanks again ken