14 DAY TRIAL // Zone Labs pretends that the connection discovered by Infoworld's scientist James Borck, between his Zone Labs powered firewall and a bunch of unknown servers over the Internet is harmless. This particular matter was discussed with other occasions in an article called "Is your firewall spying on you?", saying that the easiest way to get access to somebody's PC or server is to become a firewall maker.
Zone Labs maintain their position, and sustain that they were saying the truth about that matter, suggesting that any interruption between the firewall software and their servers can "significantly compromise" the protection offered. The explanation is based on the fact that Zone Labs needs to be able to give software updates at any time, and the only way to do that is to maintain permanent contact between the client and server.
Here's a chunk of the statement: "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.
Further on, Zonal Labs said that after they were contacted by James Borck, they maintained an ongoing dialogue with him to discover the source of his issue. Initially, Zone Labs were unable to simulate in their labs the situation described by James, but they were able to solve the problem and release some patches after James gave them the logs.
"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."
RESURSE
Windows XP Service Pack 3 - More Details
Symantec Launches the Norton 2006 Suite
Vista's Latest Two-Way Firewall!
BitDefender Announces Generation Nine