Fuddland

After being fairly happy with ZoneAlarm’s performance for a while, I upgraded to the full ZoneAlarm Security Suite [firewall, anti-virus, privacy controls], which allowed me to ditch Symantec’s products completely. This upgrade coincided with a new base release of the ZoneAlarm Family, version 5.0.590.015. Unfortunately this new release has some major stability issues [for many people, not just me] and rendered my PC pretty much unusable.

The only solution ZoneLabs offered was to downgrade to the previous version; however, since there wasn’t a Security Suite before now [i.e. no anti-virus software is included with previous versions] if I made the downgrade to an inferior version of ZoneAlarm I’d have to install a third-party anti-virus tool and hence would not be getting anything like the product that I’d paid for.

I contacted ZoneLabs customer support and offered to accept a refund of the difference between the Security Suite and ZoneAlarm Pro, despite this meaning I’d have to use the previous version of that too, as I liked the privacy settings and easily customisable firewall that it provided. However, for some reason they couldn’t simply do that, and would only refund the full price of the Security Suite. I’d then have to purchase the latest release of Pro, to get a valid registration code, then downgrade that to ZoneAlarm Pro 4.5.594.000. Obviously I accepted their offer of a full refund, but resorted to using the free version 4.5.594.000 of ZoneAlarm together with my reinstalled Norton Anti-Virus.

All transactions had been carried out in US dollars; the refund went onto my credit card today, and thanks to fluctuations in the exchange rates I’ve actually ended up about £1.50 better off, which makes me wonder if a career as a day-trader is my calling after all.

#1

bsag | 2004 / 06 / 11 – 13:02

5.0.590.015 - what kind of a version number is that? I suppose that security products (particularly Windows ones, hem-hem) go through a lot of revisions pretty rapidly, but I would be very afraid of 5.0.590.015. What a pain, though - was it all worth £1.50?

#2

David | 2004 / 06 / 11 – 13:11

Re #1: Yeah, it’s a very odd version number but if you look at the release history for Security Suite you’ll see it’s the first public release — the 5.0.590.015 applies to all members of the family [e.g. ZoneAlarm Pro public releases went from 4.5.594.000 to 5.0.590.015]. Versions 4.5.xxx.xxx do not have the problems that the 5.0 branch have.

And no, it really wasn’t worth the quid-and-a-half. If I’d known about the problems beforehand I’d never had installed it [although if they fix them, I would try out the new version — they offer a 15-day free trial which I really should have used in the first place].

#3

David | 2004 / 06 / 11 – 13:19

Further re #1 “hem hem”: And hey, Mac users can’t be so smug about security anymore. :P

#4

bsag | 2004 / 06 / 11 – 15:20

I knew you’d bring that up. ;-)

a) It’s fixed now
b) As far as I know, nothing bad actually happened to anyone as a result of the hole. It was theoretically possible, but didn’t get exploited.
c) Yes, we should stop being such smug gits, because it’s only a matter of time before we get hit with a real exploit.

I’ll shut up now.

#5

David | 2004 / 06 / 11 – 16:13

Re #4: Glad I didn’t disappoint you. ;) You’re right, security problems are a lot more prevalent with Windows at the moment, but you need to take into account that it’s more worthwhile to try and find holes in a system that 90% [plucked-out-of-the-air number] of the world’s computers run, and as Macs get ever more popular it probably is only a matter of time before they get targeted. [Yes I know OS X is based on UNIX or something that makes it inherently more secure than Windows from the get-go.]

I guess the problem is, with such a vast user-base of widely varying I.T. abilities, it’s very difficult to get everyone to apply the patches quickly. In fact, I think I read that most of the holes are exploited by people who wait for Microsoft to release patches that they then reverse-engineer, and rely on most users being pretty slow to update.

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