antivirus help, zonealarm security problem

[jsnipes28]

So I just bought Zone Alarn Security Suite 7.0 and installed it and got everything running on the reccomendation of someone in IRC but know that i have it wont allow me to connect to IRC.

It seems to ask me whenever I open up a new program whether I want to allow it acces to connect to the internet etc and I have said yes for IRC. In addition there is like a control panel in ZoneAlarm that has 3 columns "Trust Level, Trusted and Internet." I have IRC set to the highest trust level and the other two columns have green checks to indicate that the program is ok. Yet when I open IRC it wont connect to the server and says it is being blocked by ZoneAlarm.

I am searching elsewhere on the internets but if anyone has experience this problem or uses ZA or has any ingenious ideas, it would be appreciated.

Thanks
John

[kidpokeher]

Answering this will cost a minute of your time. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Long time since I used IRC but it sounds to me ZA is blocking a port and/or IP address that IRC needs to open up in order to connect to IRC. What number that is I'm unsure of. I'm sure IRC has something in their help file regarding this as it has to be a common problem for anyone using a firewall.

Once you figure out what the IP address is, open ZA, click the Firewall option on the left, click Zones near the top right, then add the IP address of the server you are trying to connect to and make it part of your "trusted" zone. Click back on the Main tab and make sure Trusted Zone is set to Med and you should be able to connect.

In short, the Internet Zone, if set to high, is making it so IRC can't detect your computer. Unfortunately, your computer has to act as a server to send and receive text. That's usually what causes all these security problems for people using IRC.