[PCTECH] Re: How to stop "phone-home" activity?

[Tom Liotta <qsrvbas@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Bale wrote:

> Jim Franz mentioned "I use Zone Alarm Pro and have no problem w/Live Update.
> But I set it to where I have to approve every connection."  Doesn't this get
> to be time-consuming?  And how easy/difficult is it to identify the
> application that is sending and/or the data that is sent?

It can seem annoying at first. Pretty much every unique kind of 
communications request generates an inquiry. And if you don't take a 
look at the product displays, you don't learn how to make categories of 
rules instead of specific ones.

For example, Windows Update can access dozens of IP addresses. Microsoft 
has multiple groups of IP addresses and DNS can resolve to different 
groups at different times on the same day. I ran into this a couple 
months ago. If you try to approve by individual IP address, you'll 
convince yourself that the product is nuts. But you'll learn that you 
should take one of the many alternatives and instead simply grant the 
Windows Update process the ability to access the Internet and be done 
with it. Unless...

> John Jones mentions that his software firewall "detects when an
> application's EXE
> file has changed and forces me to re-authorize it for 'net access."  Might I
> ask which firewall app does this?

...you get some unexpected message that says something like "Windows 
Update has changed and is asking for permission to access the Internet." 
If you have done nothing that might cause a change to Windows Update 
itself, then you better consider rejecting the request and 
investigating. ZoneAlarm, and I imagine many other S/W firewalls, works 
this way.

> The other consideration I have is performance.  This is a 233MHz CPU with
> 128MB of RAM, running Win98SE.

This is a 266Mhz PC running W2K with 56K dialup. ZoneAlarm doesn't seem 
to make much difference. The big "performance" hit is when I start some 
function, walk away and come back an hour later to find "XXX is 
requesting access Y/N". Rats. Okay, I grant the request, go away and 
come back later again. But that's the price I've chosen to pay. It's 
infrequent.

For most things, A/V is a much bigger hit.

Tom Liotta