The wonderful free ZoneAlrarm firewall hasn't been updated since November 2006. That's a long time on the Internet.
It doesn't look like it's going to be updated anytime soon, either.
A few weeks ago, ZoneAlarm tricked users of the free firewall into downloading what they're told is version 7.0 of the freeware, but is really a 15-day trial version for a paid program, ZoneAlarm Security Suite program. I wrote about it here.
They're still doing this, and the installation still requires you to uninstall any anti-virus you're running, without acknowledging that you're really installing ZoneAlarm Security Suite, which has its own anti-virus program.
That's unethical, and dangerous to boot, if you uninstall your anti-virus program without immediately re-initiating the installation of the Security Suite. That might not happen very often, but if it happens at all, ZoneAlarm will be blamed.
And it gets worse. I thought I would be sneaky and download a trial version of ZoneAlarm Pro 7.0, wait 15 days and then, instead of paying for ZoneAlarm Pro, have the software revert to the free version. That's what happened in earlier versions of ZoneAlarm Pro.
Not this time. If you choose not to install ZoneAlarm Pro, the firewall simply shuts down—it doesn't revert to ZoneAlarm freeware and doesn't even recommend that you re-install the freeware.
ZoneAlarm has every right to stop offering updates to its free firewall, but it shouldn't pretend that it's still available, and trick users into downloading and installing software without telling them what they're actually installing.
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