Review of ZoneAlarm anti virus

The world of online hacking and malware has grown from being the playground of children to a very organized criminal enterprise. There’s a lot of money being made on the back of normal users, thanks to infected computers transmitting them credit card information, payment information, logins and passwords. Infected computers are numbered in the millions worldwide, and they are constantly being used by criminal organizations to steal and cause online chaos. That’s why there’s a number of companies that make all sorts of protection software that they sell to users so that they can protect themselves. ZoneAlarm anti virus is one of them, and in fact one of the more popular ones. But how good is it really, and do you need to spend the money on it?

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ZoneAlarm is actually one of the oldest security options out there, but they started as a firewall. This kind of software used to be critical to protect computers from unauthorized access. However in recent years, thanks to home routers and recent systems coming with firewalls built in, there hasn’t had a need for an additional software firewall. So ZoneAlarm now offers a full security suite, including an anti virus, which should protect your computer from any malware. To see if an anti virus is good or not, it’s very hard to just count the number of viruses that they find, because there’s new ones all the time. Instead, anti virus software is typically classified in two categories. There’s the standard type, which knows about a long list of viruses, and will block them. This is the old way of doing things. Modern software now use heuristics, which are complex mathematical equations to detect new viruses, and hopefully block any malware from infecting your system.

So is ZoneAlarm a good anti virus? Yes, it is. But that’s also not entirely the point. Every modern anti virus out there uses heuristics, and is pretty much the same from an effectiveness point of view. Instead, they difference themselves based on how easy to use they are, and how much they cost. And this is where ZoneAlarm falls short. While it’s fairly easy to use, much more than some other paid solutions, ZoneAlarm has a tendency of displaying an alarming number of popups. Often, it seems like this kind of software just lets you know that it’s there, it’s running and it’s doing a good job, just so you remember to pay the annual fee next time it comes up. There’s no real reason for so many popups and warning messages. As for the price, ZoneAlarm is also not bad, but it’s not free, in fact it does cost a substantial amount of money, when there are free solutions out there. Getting a free anti virus, as long as it’s a modern heuristic one, will give you the same effectiveness as this one.

Overall, what’s the bottom line on ZoneAlarm anti virus? My suggestion is not to go for it. Instead, Microsoft publishes its own anti malware solution called Microsoft Security Essentials, which you can find on their site or by just searching the web for it. The good thing is that it’s free, and it’s very quiet, two features that ZoneAlarm is missing. Just get that one instead.

Decide for yourself visit the ZoneAlarm web site

Watch the ZoneAlarm review video from YouTube. It’s pretty amazing all the features ZoneAlarm packs into their software package.