I just installed the freebie Zone Alarm.
However, every page I go to now...the @@## dialoque  ###%%^^^ box
comes up and asks if its okay???
How should I know as I have no idea what all that gibberish is about?
Is there a site to see exactly what it says or means?

steph53...

Fear not. Zone Alarm is just faithfully executing its duties
as your newly-appointed pooter-protector. Since its job is 
to guard against any suspicious activity between your pooter
and the internet, it will initially ask for verification of
every program which accesses the internet. Therefore, when
you start your browser, it will detect the browser's attempt
to connect with the internet, and ask you if it's OK for the
program 'iexpress.exe' (the actual executable file for the
IE browser) to access the internet. Since this is a program
you trust and which will constantly be accessing the internet,
you can safely check the box which says "Remember this answer
the next time I use this program", and Zone Alarm will never
bother you about it again.

If you're uncertain about a particular program (particularly 
when it asks about a file trying to access the internet when
you haven't initiated a program), then you can click on 
"More information", and you will be whisked to the Zone
Alarm site and be given an overview of the file and what
the risk level is for this particular file. If it is a 
Windows file which is commonly used in accessing the internet,
such as svchost.exe, then it will explain that it is not
likely a threat.

You would probably be happier allowing Zone Alarm to run
quietly in the background, rather than inform you of every
attempt by something/someone on the internet to contact you.
For example, your ISP may periodically connect with your
machine to check your connection with them. Zone Alarm
will notify you of every such harmless attempt, along with
every harmful attempt, but, in general, unless you are
very computer-savvy, this information will serve no
purpose to you. Running in silent mode, it will still
block all suspicious contact, but will not pop up a
window when it does so. To run silent, double-click on
the ZA icon in your system tray (bottom-right of your
taskbar) and click on 'alerts and logs' on the left of
the ZA window, and then on the 'Main' tab. then check
the button that says "Off" under 'Alert Events Shown".

You can get a good overview of all of this by clicking
on Zone Alarm's 'Help' section, but the above should
suffice, for the most part.


Please do not rate this answer until you are satisfied that
the answer cannot be improved upon by means of a dialog
established through the "Request for Clarification" process.

sublime1-ga

Thank you sublime1-ga...

As I am not very pooter savvy, I now have Zone Alarm running in silent
mode and those pesky pop up windows no longer come up. Exactly the
answer I was looking for :)