RE: Re: Re: PC Firewall Choices

["Greg" <full-disclosure2 () pchandyman com au>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: full-disclosure-bounces () lists grok org uk 
> [mailto:full-disclosure-bounces () lists grok org uk] On Behalf 
> Of Nancy Kramer
> Sent: Friday, 20 January 2006 2:30 PM
> To: Stan Bubrouski; full-disclosure () lists grok org uk
> Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] Re: Re: PC Firewall Choices
>
>
> I admit I know nothing about firewalls but with ZA I have had 
> to shut it 
> down sometimes to go onto the internet.  I have no idea why.  
> I just can't 
> get on and when I shut it down I can.

That'd be a well known and never fixed bug I reported to Zonelabs some years
back now. It has a feature to automatically lock internet connection after
so many minutes of inactivity. The length of time can be changed by the
user. What it REALLY did was cut off access to internet and any LAN you were
on, isolating you entirely and never actually let go of it when the user was
back at the keyboard. Exiting ZA let that go and internet and lan were
restored. You have the option to turn that feature OFF but even that didn't
stop the whole thing happening. So, about the only thing you could do was to
set the auto lock as high as it could go and turn the feature off. It would
still go off after that many minutes had passed (which I believe is 999 in
the PRO version and 99 in the free version) and lock you out again but it
was delayed by that much, at least.

You CAN set certain programs to pass by its' lock, however. So, if you have
some computers almost always chattering away on a distributed project but
otherwise not touched, you could allow those programs to pass on even
though, should you attempt to get out with a simple web browser (where it
wasn't allowed to pass the lock), you cant. Saves some stuffing about on
such machines and let's face it - the more "free" some company execs see,
the more likely they are to use it. Surprising how many Windows based
companies use free ZA.

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