Zone Alarm Latest In Privacy Scandal
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UPDATED: If you can’t trust your security provider who can you trust?

See company statment regarding this issue below.

Checkpoint Software’s software firewall is spying on users according to this story. The company has recently admitted that the security software has what it is now calling a “bug” in the code which instructs the software to send encrypted data to four different servers.
Discovered last year, the Israeli company initially denied the claims made by InfoWorld which discovered the software communicated with external servers even when all the communications options in the ZoneAlarm Security Suite were disabled.

After denying the fact for two months, the company is now admitting this is true but is blaming a flaw in the software.

Although the company has promised a fix for the flaw, users are advices they can apply their own fix by adjusting their Host file settings.

Statement From Zone Labs:

Zone Labs has a variety of solutions, including the ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite, that offer consumers protection against Internet threats such as spyware, viruses, Trojans, rootkits, keyloggers and more. A recent report in Infoworld included information that may be misleading, and we would like to assure all of our customers that the integrity of our security solutions and the privacy of our users are not only intact but of the utmost importance to us.

To clarify, in order to ensure that users have up-to-date protection, the ZoneAlarm product family relies not only on powerful desktop technology but also a central server-based infrastructure. Security software is no longer a self-contained program that can be updated annually. With zero-hour threats emerging, consumers need dynamic ongoing updates. For example, the ZoneAlarm SmartDefense Advisor service allows us to block rapidly propagating malware trying to enter a user’s system – long before a signature can be written. These communications are not only essential to the effectiveness of our products, they are a significant part of the reason why most customers purchase our software.

The only way to deliver those updates is to maintain some level of communication between the software on a user’s PC and the Zone Labs servers. If a user disables that communication, they can significantly compromise the protection offered by their ZoneAlarm product. Our customers need their anti-virus product to update regularly. They want to know if a newly discovered keylogger is trying to install on their computer.

Despite the value of these services to our customers, we realize that a very limited number of users do wish to disable all communication and cut off all updates – even though this will weaken their security. We’ve done our best to accommodate these users over the years. We do currently have an issue where ZoneAlarm continues to ping a server when in fact a user has asked it to be disabled. It will be fixed as soon as possible.

For any users who are concerned about this communication between the user’s PC and the Zone Labs servers, it is important to note that Zone Labs does not infringe upon the privacy of our customers. We don’t save personal information. We don’t do many other things that legitimate software companies do to enhance their marketing efforts, like use persistent Web cookies. This conservative approach is intentional because we take privacy extremely seriously.

After being contacted by James Borck of Infoworld, we maintained an ongoing dialogue with him to discover the source of his issue. Initially, we were unable to reproduce it in our labs, until he submitted his log files. At that point, we were able to identify the bug and provided Mr. Borck with a temporary workaround. We never refuted his contention that an issue existed, although it did take some time to replicate it.

The actual communication in dispute is a simple encrypted GET request that is checking to see if the user’s security software is current. We will continue to work with Mr. Borck and anyone else who might have any concerns about this issue.

With the Internet threat environment having evolved to the point where viruses can propagate around the world within hours, we must recommend that people do not disable their ZoneAlarm product features that connect your PC to Zone Labs’ servers.  Security software today can no longer be perceived as a static product. It is a service, and only through dynamic updates can we ensure that consumers have relevant, proactive protection.