I was there for SoftICE and BlackICE.

Simpler times.

I read ZoneAlarm and it was like suddenly a part of my brain that went unvisited for 25 years lit up...

Same... Totally forgot about ZA.

Such nostalgia! I probably forgot about it after switching over to Linux 25 years ago.

Same!

This is such a naive view on computer security. It’s not just about spyware, which is also not exclusive to commercial vendors.

Good old Halo 2 stand-bying. An absolute plague.

if anyone else suddenly started wondering, PC magazines still exist in physical form. There are even still Linux magazines that come with installer CDs for distros. And all kinds of other magazines as well, like for Mac computers, for photo editors, for Raspberry Pi etc.

I learned about it from Leo and Patrick on The Screen Savers

It's because there's no way to make universal kernel modules/drivers, like it is on Windows.

This is what I used! At some point I managed to block DHCP lease renewals on my computer, and Internet would always stop working after a given timespan. Took a good while to figure out I caused the problem myself.

No, the Windows firewall in its default configuration does not restrict outbound connections in any way. Any application can make any outbound connection it wants. If an application attempts to listen for incoming connections from external sources and there is not an existing policy, Windows will pop up a dialog asking the user if they want to allow this and if so whether it should be allowed to listen on all networks, only networks marked as "private", or for domain-bound corporate computers only networks where the domain controller is reachable.

It can be manually configured with very detailed policies, but you have to know where to go to find those controls.

It's been a while since I used ZoneAlarm or Little Snitch, but the last time I used either one the default behavior was instead that any connection attempt or attempt to listen for which there was not a policy would result in a dialog showing all the details about what application is looking to connect to or receive connections from what as well as a variety of options for creating a policy or even not creating a policy and just deciding whether that one connection would be allowed.

Also back when I used ZoneAlarm I had dialup so the taskbar addon they had which showed realtime bandwidth usage and what applications had active connections was really useful. It also had a big red "Stop" button that would immediately disable all connections, which thinking about it in retrospect really makes me miss the more innocent days of the internet.

Most of the windows firewalls tools are just front ends for the integrated one with more sensible defaults.

That website redirected my browser to a very sketchy website after a couple seconds.

Don't open it.

@dang