Hmmm...interesting. Thanks for the explanation. I have to admit I am one of the naive people who thought he was protected from hacking by Zone Alarm. But, this brings up a few questions.
1) Alphabeater and Jack, do you have cable modems or other internet access such that you are always online and succeptible to hacking? I thought the main benefit of my firewall is when I am online, but not using my computer for anything.
2) Quote by Alphabeater: "zonealarm, even on its highest setting, provides no protection from inbound attacks." Could you elaborate on this? By not responding, isn't ZA protecting you? I do try to shut down when possible to avoid hacking, but thought ZA protects me the rest of the time.
3) Quote by Alphabeater: "if zonealarm is running, it reports an 'intrusion attempt' on port 12345, and then doesn't respond at all, causing the requester to wait until the connection times out before knowing that it has failed."
By not responding, isn't one of the benefits of ZA that the hacker doesn't know you are there, whereas when Windows tells the hacker to 'go away' the hacker knows there is a port or computer there and can keep trying to hack in?
4) Are there others out there who have "always online" ISP connections who have given up on firewalls?
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