Modern Software Experience

2010-09-20

ZoneAlarming

ZoneAlarm

ZoneAlarm is best known as a firewall that's available in both free and paid editions. Nowadays, ZoneAlarm is more than just a firewall. Various paid editions include such features as pop-up blocking, adware detection, anti-virus, anti-spam filter and parental controls.

ZoneAlarm Free, the free firewall is quite popular with home users, for several good reasons; it does not only protect against incoming threats but includes protection against unauthorised out-bound traffic, is free and easy to use. Check Point software likes to promote ZoneAlarm Free as freeware, but it should arguably be classified as adware, as it does pop-up dialog boxes advertising the paid editions.

I've used ZoneAlarm for several years. I've recommended it to others. I will never do so again.

I've used ZoneAlarm for several years. I've recommended it to others. I will never do so again. That isn't because of some of current technical issues or because it doesn't score so well on independent tests anymore. It has nothing to do with the current features or quality. It is because Check Point just made it impossible for me trust them ever again.

scare tactics

A few days ago, a friend who is using ZoneAlarm Free told me that he had received a serious pop-ups. He sounded rather worried. He thought his PC might be infected, and the pop-ups had told him that his system wasn't sufficiently protected. He is not a very technical user, but ZoneAlarm is easy to use, he's been using it for years and he has a pretty good idea what to allow and disallow. Call him Joe Average User accustomed to using ZoneAlarm.

He was worried enough for me to check his system. There was no infection and all security software was running and up-to-date. I considered that he might have been prompted to update ZoneAlarm to a newer version that offer better production, so that was one of the first things I checked, but ZoneAlarm was up to date too. I checked the ZoneAlarm log to see whether anything odd had happened. There were a few more intrusion detections that week than the weeks before. Maybe a few of those caused ZoneAlarm to display a pop-up, but then again these things happen so often that firewalls just log these events without alerting you to it.

It was not clear to me what, if anything, had happened. The PC seemed to be running just fine. I asked him whether he was sure it wasn't just some pop-up advertisement touting the features of a paid edition. He was happy to hear the PC was fine, but also adamant that he had received a serious scary looking warning. After inspecting the PC and finding nothing, I doubted that, so I just asked him to make a screen dump next time the dialog appeared.

I learned something today: Check Point Software isn't a honourable security vendor. ZoneAlarm Free is scareware.

deliberately misleading dialog box

Turns out my friend was upset by a deliberately misleading dialog  box. I've been using another firewall for some time, so I didn't see that pop-up myself, but plenty of others did and quite a few are less than happy with Check Point Software for using scareware tactics - the kind of thing honourable security vendors are supposed to protect us against.
I learned something today: Check Point Software isn't a honourable security vendor. ZoneAlarm Free is scareware.

Many users received exactly the same dialog. User Angry_with_ZA started a thread on the ZoneAlarm forum and include dirtyzonealarm.jpg, a picture of the dialog ZoneAlarm presented.

ZoneAlarm Global Virus Alert

I apologise for the low quality of this image, the somewhat blurry text in particular, it is because Angry_with_ZA used the lossy JPEG format.

ZoneAlarm Free users are not amused.

angry users

Most messages in discussions thread about ZoneAlarm's marketing tactic are from Junior Members with just one or two bulletin board posts; many ZoneAlarm Free users are upset enough that they took the trouble to join the ZoneAlarm bulletin board, just because they wanted to post their opinion on the matter. ZoneAlarm Free users are not amused.

User Angry_with_ZA comments You may just finally push me into buying a firewall product--from someone else.. Comments from other users aren't celebratory either.

thread deleted

User goozak remarks

Just to let you know that because of your recent scare tactic (http://forums.zonealarm.com/showthread.php?t=75328) I've uninstalled your product. This is way too pushy for my taste...

The discussion thread he refers to is the original discussion thread. When that thread was picked up by the media, Check Point Software deleted that discussion thread from the board.

Various comments refer to the deletion of the thread. GreyDuck comments

First ZA sends out a scareware popup as a marketing ploy and now they're deleting or closing any posts on the forum mentioning it. I'm sure this post will be gone soon too.

betrayal

Most comments express anger and dissatisfaction. Users feel that their trust has betrayed, timesurf70 writes

It is Check Point Management turning in scumbags after so many years of rock solid trust. I have trumpeted ZoneAlarm to hundreds of neophyte PC users. Because of this I will be going back and telling everyone I know and support about this betrayal of the public trust and slumming out a once great name to scumbaggery.

what's wrong

The commenters understand exactly what's wrong the pop-up dialog box, thx0027 writes

Just as a point of information. The pop-ups that we are seing as adverts with ZA are EXACTLY what we try to teach people are very bad. Now with this "Global Virus Alert" popup, you can't tell the difference between good stuff and bad stuff. You can't educate people about what to watch out for when the security software acts exactly the same as malware popups.

User hometech expresses how many who regularly help others with their PC and recommended ZoneAlarm feel about Check Point's scare marketing tactics:

My phone is ringing off the wall from people calling about a "virus" they have on their PCs or rather don't have on their PCs.

You see, I don't get paid for telling people that they don't need to worry about it, because it is simply scare marketing.

On the other hand, I PAY (with my reputation) for recommending a software to them that starts scaring them with evil looking pop-ups.

Now, we both look bad.

You guys have really dropped the ball with this BS nonsense.

informative dialog box?

ZoneAlarm tweets

Check Point Software has been tweeting about their scare dialog box:

2010-09-18 02:51 zonealarm As a security vendor, we proactively let our customers know about newly discovered viruses so their PCs stay protected.

2010-09-20 xx:xx zonealarm Have a question about the recent ZoneAlarm popup message? Visit http://is.gd/fjS7b

ZoneAlarm blog post

That short link leads to the latest ZoneAlarm blog post, titled ZoneAlarm Popup Message Explained:

The popup message in ZoneAlarm Free Firewall was intended as an alert to a virus our technology discovered. We wanted to proactively let our users know that ZoneAlarm Free Firewall and other AV products do not fully protect from this virus. It was never our intent to lead customers to believe they have a virus on their computer. This was purely an informative message about a legitimate and serious virus that also included information about the differences in protection of various products, and how to get protection against it. ZoneAlarm is committed to providing our customers with the best protection and considers it our job to proactively alert users whenever a potential risk is looming rather than wait for the damage to be done.

That one paragraph is their entire post on the matter. It doesn't contain the vaguest hint of a mea culpa. There is no apology at all, no remark that they have learned from a very bad mistake promise that they will never this it again, and will work hard to regain your trust. None of that.

Instead, Check Point tries to downplay the issue by claiming that it is just an informative dialog box. That is adding insult to injury; if it were just an informative message, users wouldn't be this upset.
This dialog box wasn't designed to alert or inform, their dialog box was designed to scare you into buying Check Point products. This dialog box just earned ZoneAlarm the scareware moniker.

danger

Everything about the dialog box screams danger. The use of black-on-yellow text and buttons. The use of red text. The use of a large bold font for the Global Virus Alert heading. The danger icon. The text Your PC may be in danger and the exclamation mark at the end of that text. The fact that the risk is presented as High - in red. The fact that the warning is for a new trojan virus that steals banking passwords and financial account data; All of this is designed to scare you into thinking that it is much better to pay for one of their products than risk losing all your money to a global virus alert-scary new threat.

additional security

The final sentence: Your ZoneAlarm Free firewall provides basic protection, but this new threat requires additional security. is pure scare tactics. When you read that, you're likely to think that crackers have come up with some new threat for which you need to upgrade your firewall. The truth is that if you already have good anti-virus software, you do not need to do anything at all. In fact, upgrading to a ZoneAlarm Suite that including anti-virus protection would even be a bad move; you should not use two different anti-virus products on the same machine. That's asking for trouble.

Users are more likely to do without a firewall than without anti-virus software. Most users of ZoneAlarm Free already have a free anti-virus product installed. By misinforming all these users that they should upgrade, Check Point Software is actually telling them to install two different anti-virus applications at the same time. Well, perhaps their upgrade disables the other one, but their advice remains wrong. They claim that you need additional security and that is technically correct, but not what you are likely to understand. The third-party anti-virus software you already have is such additional security.

You are likely to misunderstand that you need to upgrade this product, and not because your reading skills are inadequate, but because Check Point Software's marketroids wrote a technically correct message that seems designed to be misunderstood. After all, they could have written the crystal clear you need anti-virus software as well, but chose to write the muddy, ominous sounding you need additional security instead - a phrase that excels at not pointing out what that additional security is.

Their message particularly avoids the clarification that you already have that additional security, that they are only bothering you because you obtained your antivirus software from another party, as that would be tantamount to admitting that their entire message is a superfluous time-draining commercial scare tactic.

Windows Vista Security Centre

There is another thing wrong with their alert. Check Point Software knows full well that they don't need sell firewall users on the virtues of using anti-virus software. Not only are their firewall users very likely to already have antivirus software, they also know very well that Microsoft is already warning Windows users that they should install antivirus software.

Windows Vista Security Centre

The Windows Security Centre warns you if you are running without firewall, anti-virus or automatic updates. There is absolutely no need for ZoneAlarm to admonish their users to get anti-virus software at all, or update it, as Windows itself already does so.

By the way, the update settings shown here are the ones recommended and used by security professionals. Fully automatic updates have been known to render systems inoperable more than once.

outbound protection

It is legitimate to wonder whether the marketroids at Check Point Software even understand what protection ZoneAlarm Free, the basic product their users already have, already provides. Suppose, just suppose, for the sake of argument, that this trojan found it way onto your Windows PC somehow. Would you really need additional protection, or would ZoneAlarm's monitoring of outbound connections alert you as soon as the trojan tried to phone home? It sure seems that Check Point temporarily forgot why their basic firewall features outbound protection; because it can keep users safe even when malware makes it onto their PC.

trust

Trust is hard to earn, but easy to lose. Check Point Software has gone to the dark side. They are using scareware tactics to trick users into buying a product they do not need. You may want to debate whether a firewalls should give any anti-virus alert at all, as it is confusing at best. You may want to debate whether a vendor is allowed to call their product free when it serves advertisements for other products or upgrades, as that is annoying and not really free.

There can be no debate about the appropriateness of an attention-demanding risk: high security alert popping-up, telling you that Your PC may be in danger, complete with large headings in bold fonts, suggestive colour schemes and icons and an act-now GET PROTECTION button that is really not an security alert at all, but just an advertisement for a security service users are currently obtaining from a third party. That is as inappropriate as it gets.

Oh wait, almost forgot, it is even worse. Because installing another anti-virus application without de-installing your current one might do more harm than good it is even more inappropriate - it is a scare-tactics demand for your money, so they can endanger instead of protect your PC!

I apologise to everyone I ever recommend ZoneAlarm to.

correct response

I apologise to everyone I ever recommend ZoneAlarm to. I am sorry. It was a good product once. The company's management has gone to the dark side. ZoneAlarm Free is scareware now.

There is only correct response to Check Point Software's scareware marketing: replace and discommend. Replace ZoneAlarm Free with another firewall and discommend ZoneAlarm to everybody else.

updates

2019-09-21 ZoneAlarm forum message

A Check Point moderator has posted the following message on the forum.

ZoneAlarm Marketing team has turn[ed] off this pop-up alert in ZoneAlarm Free firewall.

User lusername was quick to ask a pertinent question:

Just to add, you first state that the popup was to warn of a new virus.

Why then was it the MARKETING team which removed it?.

links

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