Anyone having a second thoughts about this? I have gone back to MS Essentials and scrapped AVG Free. This time around it didn't change any Windows settings as it had with the first install.
I am considering scrapping ZA in my Win 7 install for the sake of simplicity.
Bill
I no long use a 3rd party software firewall in any of my systems or new builds. I simply use Windows 7's built-in firewall along with the following free offerings:
MS Security Essentials (http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/)
ThreatFire (http://www.threatfire.com/) (I set this to auto update & I disable the 'notices' section)
SpywareBlaster (http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html)
For hardware, I use my Linksys router as an added barrier.
The combined efforts above have worked well for me. I see no reason to install a 3rd party software firewall, nor have I had a reason to install additional malware protection.
Thanks, I had not heard of ThreatFire but seems a good concept. Behavioral diagnosis makes a lot of sense.
Bill
Have stopped using third party firewalls too. Just use Windows 7 firewall with MS SE and have no problems.
As an FYI, I like ThreatFire and it works silently in the background.
However, on first scan it found a couple "malicious cookies" and recommended that I upgrade to the paid version to fix the problem. One of the cookies was to newegg.com and the other to a typical ad agency. Hmmm.
After doing the initial scan and setting the parameters to my liking, I have not received any pesky pop-ups, etc. In all, I still recommend the product.