I love the Comodo Firewall, especially for how detailed it is, and the fact that Defense+ inquires about more things than ZoneAlarm does.
Unfortunately, the people whom I help with computers are not very technically savvy, and they even have problems with things such as ZoneAlarm. Many of them just get annoyed at the prompts, and will say “Accept” for ANYTHING that pops up, since they have no way of understanding or discerning whether the things that are trying to access the Internet are legitimate or not. After all, malware isn’t going to be named something like “I_am_stealing_your_identity.exe,” but will LOOK legitimate. Furthermore, the programs that ARE valid don’t help matters, since they are often named something ambiguous (e.g. the number of programs that have an “update.exe” with no other naming to help identify it better).
The simple fact is: NO firewall or anti-virus solution is foolproof, and MOST of the people using them are fools who nullify a great deal of the protection by not using them properly.
Given all the above, I use Comodo on MY systems, but install ZoneAlarm for the people I help. Frankly, however, I think Comodo gives better overall protection, and would LIKE to install that for other people. Thus, are there any particular settings or options that would be more friendly for the technologicallly challenged users - affording them sufficient protection, but remaining as unobtrusive as possible? Likewise, do any of YOU have suggestions on better ways of explaining these things to such users so they won’t just accept everything (possibly allowing malware to get through) or block everything (possibly preventing anti-virus updates from running, for example)?
Thanks!