It is important to enable "Show the alert popup window." If you have trouble using the firewall, this can help you figure out what went wrong. It also will let you know when your computer comes under attack, within seconds.

If you want to fight back, the popup alert has a button that takes you to the Zone Alarm web site for an explanation of the attack. (You need the paid version to use that feature.)

Figure 4: Alert configuration.

If you only log alerts to a text file, the results are, ahem, cryptic. Here’s an example:

FWIN,2001/02/23,13:08:42 -7:00 GMT,63.90.208.12:137,204.252.57.118:137,UDP

Don’t worry if you can’t decipher that log. Unless you aspire to hackerdom, you normally won’t need to get this far under the hood in order to secure your computer.

Figure 5: Choosing program settings.

Figure 5 shows how to choose what programs you will never allow to use the Internet, which ones may always access it, and which ones you want to check with a popup window each time they run.