Symantec deserves to die!

Druga Runda

Sleepy Substitute
Regular
http://www.theinq.net/?article=28000

http://news.com.com/Symantec+scraps+Sygate+consumer+firewall/2100-7350_3-5974230.html?tag=nefd.top

The Sygate Personal Firewall and Sygate Personal Firewall Pro products will no longer be available effective Nov. 30, Symantec spokesman Phil Weiler said Monday. Consumers will receive special upgrade pricing when they buy a replacement product from Symantec’s Norton family of Internet security products, he said.

By pulling the Sygate Personal Firewall, Symantec is further reducing the options for people looking for a free firewall for their computer. Sygate offered the Sygate Personal Firewall at no cost and sold Sygate Personal Firewall Pro. Kerio Technologies has previously said it will discontinue its desktop firewall at the end of this year.
First they bought the company, and now they are discountinuing the products that are superior to their own.

Why does this remind me of Creative... :mad:


--- in other words, go and download Sygate personal Firewall while it's still available as this is the best personal firewall there is, at the moment, and it looks to stay that way in the future.

http://soho.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm

direct link
 
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You could always use Zone Alarm. Eventhough some folks around me has had issues with that program, I have yet to have an issue. Well, okay, I haven't had any MAJOR issues, lol
 
Do Symantic really think that killing off someone's free product will make them upgrade to a Symantic product? People will either keep using their old Sygate products, or will go somewhere else to find a free replacement. If anything, customers will be pissed off at Symantic for destroying their old product, and will cross Symantic off their list of possible replacements.

BTW, I notice Lavasoft (the Ad-Aware company) have just brought out a personal firewall - anyone tried it and is it any good?
 
linthat22 said:
You could always use Zone Alarm. Eventhough some folks around me has had issues with that program, I have yet to have an issue. Well, okay, I haven't had any MAJOR issues, lol
I am mostly not using it anymore... as I have a router at home, but I used to recommend it to all my friends as this was a great product, and I used both Zone Alarm, Keiro, and Sygate from the free ones, plus Norton bloatware, and Macafee maybe a few more that can't remember... anyhow it was clearly the best from all the options both free and "to pay" for from my experience and these anti-competitive bloatware producers are killing it off, both versions the free one and the "to be paid for" one. :rolleyes:

I think Symantec should be crossed off just because their products are bad, if not for something like this... well might try out this Lavasoft firewall one day to see what's up with it.
 
Druga Runda said:
--- in other words, go and download Sygate personal Firewall while it's still available as this is the best personal firewall there is, at the moment, and it looks to stay that way in the future.
How about a link then?
 
K.I.L.E.R said:
How about distirbuting it from a personal server given that you know that they will kill it off?
They'd probably threaten to sue you. No doubt there is something in the licencing about unauthorised distribution. Quite what they'd sue you for (given it would be an older, non-supported free product) I'm not sure, especially if you don't install it yourself and so have never agreed to any EULA. Probably just threaten you with a pack of lawyers and say you're ruining their current business and don't have the right to distribute the products they own.

That's what Macrovision did with DVDdecrypter. Threatened to sue the author, got him to give up his rights to the software and pass ownership to Macrovision, and then used the rights bestowed upon them as the copyright owners to threaten any sites still distributing "their" legacy product
 
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_xxx_ said:
Druga, router alone is not enough in my experience.
what kind of problems did you get?

--- sounds slightly scary if the router was not enough.
 
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Wow! That's is BS on Symantec's behalf. Better download the free edition and make a couple backups of it tonight when I get home. Such a great firewall, and I can't use ZoneAlarm because for some reason it bluescreen's my computer a few times a day when I used it.
 
cloudscapes said:
Wow! That's is BS on Symantec's behalf. Better download the free edition and make a couple backups of it tonight when I get home. Such a great firewall, and I can't use ZoneAlarm because for some reason it bluescreen's my computer a few times a day when I used it.
Zone alarm will never ever go on any comp i have to deal with ( only 12). I just changed 5 Norton lic. to F-secure, the rest are on Karpisky, except one corp Panda, and all have sygateFW... i will never buy or tell anybody to use symantic. Oh one is Xp firewall, and its working fine with a Firefox browser, the scans always come clean...AV and SPY.
 
Druga Runda said:
what kind of problems did you get?

--- sounds slightly scary if the router was not enough.

Had a clean install with no SW-firewall running for a few hours and that resulted in a couple of worms which infected some 700+ files within minutes. There's still some stuff slipping through the "regular" http/ftp ports, I assume. My ZoneAlarm also shows quite a few "severe" intrusions blocked daily.
 
A router is superior to a software firewall, even if you turn off the firewall on the router. It uses NAT for all traffic (unless you use the DMZ), so it effectively blocks any incoming traffic, unless you have mapped a port to a server yourself.

The only thing a software firewall does better, is keeping malware from contacting the outside world. But it's much better to get rid of the malware than blocking it with a firewall, IMO.

A worm won't be able to get inside if there's nothing on the inside actively connection to the source where it comes from.


Edit: then again, if you just route all traffic to your PC (default server for all ports), then you do need a good software firewall as well.
 
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I would surely like to see a firewall software like Shorewall for Windows. Then again, Shorewall runs over iptables so what I would like to see is linux network managing for Windows :D

I too use only windows firewall and my router which has everything blocked except some ports. One of the most important things to do with a router, when used as 'firewall', is to be sure that if UPnP is supported, it should be disabled - ALWAYS.

One more thing. I've noticed there are a bunch of programs out there that tell you 'Windows Firewall needs to be modified in order for this program to work. By pressing YES you agree with this modifications". WTF is up with that?? how come can a program change firewall rules - read: add itself as safe - without the acknolwedge from an Administrator?? Doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of the firewall? Are we relying on the developers concience by warning us on these modifications??
 
DiGuru said:
A router is superior to a software firewall

Sure, but not always. If the incoming stuff is regular communication from the router POV, it won't stop it. The software firewall is clearly inferior, but it can monitor/block individual programs, not just the ports. Let's take some code running on a webpage which installs malware on your machine. From that point on, it's all just "regular" traffic for the router, it'll happily process all that without a single hitch. The SW-firewall like ZL will prevent that and ask "Do you want to allow 'KingOfAllMalware.exe' to acces the internet?", know what I mean? Or am I somehow totally wrong here (I think I'm not, though ;) )?

Edit: just saw your edit :), but that's the point

MatiasZ, isn't that Windows firewall itself asking this in terms of 'Do you want to allow this program to access the internet', just with M$-typical bad wording?
 
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well I actually run Sygate PFW still on a few of my PC's but it's only a remenant from the old days since they were setup, they don't bother me enough to disable them, very lean and unobtrusive, the other half do not have it on (since I set them up after I started using the router) and I didn't notice any bad behaviour so to speak on them.

However yes, this is a good point about blocking malware... but I guess since my surfing habits are relatively secure, and I used Firefox since it's .07 version (so a while now) I didn't have any problems anywhere. I might put it on the other's too... just for the sake of it, as once you set it up (let a few frequent programs through) and enable file and printer sharing on the network, it's like the FW is not there for 24/7 running. So that is A great product. The others all either pop up for no reason, or bloat like ZoneAlarm (at least it used to), or use much more resources by default like Norton or McAfee, or have less practical UI like Keiro, which will sadly be discontinued as well...
 
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I've been using ZA since my uni days and never had any problems, except for lower ping in online games (which I almost never play anyway).
 
_xxx_ said:
MatiasZ, isn't that Windows firewall itself asking this in terms of 'Do you want to allow this program to access the internet', just with M$-typical bad wording?

Nop. I've seen a different amount of software to the date perform this kind of actions, I can't rememeber which ones right now, but I'm 100% sure they exist, and the warning comes only from the install dialog, for example, but not Windows Firewall itself
 
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