The Red Brick Times

I just bought and installed the firewall "Zone Alarm" on my computer. About $42.50 including tax. Immediately, I have seen, with each mouse click, dozens and dozens of headers, ads and cookies blocked on their way into the box. Additionally, the Privacy settings keep showing added marketing and advertising sites for which Zone Alarm blocks ads, third partycookies, web bugs and private headers on board. Some site names include "adbrite.com", "tribalfusion.com", "doubleclick.net", "ad.trafficmp.com", "casalemedia.com", "overture.com", "atdmt.com", "hermoment.com", "zap2it.com" and others that keep pouring in. I Googled these and found most of them to be marketing groups that contract for webvertising to the masses (that's us). It also has a cache cleaner that sweeps out the temporary stuff in the memory. I just ran it and threw out 838 files, freeing 4 Mb of space in the process. This is after about an hour on the web. Strolling the web is like wandering the streets in New York City. Everything is there, even if you pretend it doesn't exist. So look into the dark alleys of your own computer sometime. While you are gazing up at the skyscrapers, someone is pinching your wallet.
Posted 4:53 PM by Andy (5) comments

       Comments:

Zone Alarm has already blocked a couple of attacks to port 139 of my computer. The programn says that port 139 is normally used by a network for file and information sharing. Zone Alarm shows the internet addresses for each attack. One came through Qwest Connumicaitons from a city in Kentucky. The other was an internet reserved address that was probably counterfited to prevent back-tracking. I also accidently set the security protocols so I was blocked from going to the Blogger or to the RBT. Woops! Here's another hack attack coming in! This is better than reading a mystery novel!

# posted by  Andy : January 16, 2006 6:41 PM
 
This last hit was from a company called XO communications in Reston Virginia. Per the on-line Zone Labs information, they are aware that their machines are the source of illicit activity and are working to contain the problem. Per the XO.com site: "XO Communications is the NLEC™ -- National Local Exchange Carrier. That means we're a telecommunications provider offering nationwide communication solutions exclusively for businesses, agents and carriers. XO delivers a range of services from Local to Long Distance phone service, DSL to Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), and advanced Network Security solutions. XO also has an award-winning Internet backbone network and serves 75 U.S. major metropolitan markets." Just goes to show you - nobody is safe, even those providing "advanced Network Security solutions."

# posted by  Andy : January 16, 2006 6:53 PM
 
How do you connect to the internet (Cable/DSL/Etc.)? What IP# is on your computer?

This site allows you to generate some simple port scanning against yourself as well as a few other things. The guy's kind of a blowhard but he is very knowledgeable and a good coder.

http://grc.com/default.htm

See "ShieldsUP!" and "LeakTest" towards the bottom of the page.

Zone Alarm is a great utility. I use the free version to see what programs on my PC are trying to "phone home".

# posted by  whatley : January 16, 2006 8:54 PM
 
Dial up and the ISP hangs a new tag each time I jump in, I believe. I am not quite ready to fork over $50 per month on top of basic connection charges. Plus cell phone charges. I don't have any cable or satellite TV hookups to pay for, but the annual expense still grows. Greedy bastards.

# posted by  Andy : January 17, 2006 8:49 PM
 
I have the Internet Secirity Suite that Verizon offers and it passed all the leak tests with flying colors. Coupled with PestPatrol, HijackThis, and Spybot I've been able to things pretty clean.

# posted by  A. O. : January 21, 2006 11:08 AM
 
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