ZoneAlarm's free firewall has been around for over 10 years. The latest release adds intelligence formerly found only the paid editions, making it PCMag's Editors' Choice.
It's true that the free firewall hasn't gotten a lot of love in the last few years as the company focused more on top-tier products like their ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2010 mega-suite. That's not to say the free firewall was anything but effective. It's just that users are no longer so accepting of a firewall that pops up dozens of cryptic questions. "Hey boss! Something called 'Generic Host Process for Win32 Services' wants to access the network. Should I let it??" Smart, modern firewalls, including paid editions of ZoneAlarm, now answer those questions for themselves.
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine can't show us ZoneAlarm's very earliest Web pages. Maybe there's some kind of blackout to avoid temporal paradox? But a look at ZoneAlarm.com from June of 2000, almost 10 full years ago, shows that the product was alive and kicking--already at version 2.1. Over the years, the company managed to paint over the garish user interface, a change for which we're all grateful. We're also grateful that they've never stopped giving the public free personal firewall protection.
The new ZoneAlarm Free Firewall 9.2 ditches popup overload by relying on the same SmartDefense Advisor technology used by the paid editions. On those rare occasions when it does ask you what to do, pay attention! It doesn't ask unless there's something weird about the program.
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