Zone Alarm Settings Help, please

Hi,

I'm currently waiting for someone to assist me on de-virusing (another thread), but while I wait, I was wondering if I could get some advice about ZoneAlarm. Feel free to tell me if this breaches etiquette and I shouldn't open another thread, but I thought this issue was of a different nature.

ZoneAlarm has a section on program permissions, and I'm not sure I've got it set up properly. There are these categories "access" and "server" and I don't know which programs to allow or block from the various activities.

Can you give me a general rule of thumb? Ie, what should browsers be set at? And what about all these anti-spyware programs I now have?
Then there are various things that look like OS processes - WINNT\system32\mstask.exe
WINNT\system32\services.exe
WINNT\system32\spoolsv.exe
WINNT\system32\svchost.exe

This last one I thought was spyware? I blocked everything for that one ...

Any help is appreciated.

Ann

 

Generally allowing those progams internet access is OK. In general, set server permissions at NO or ASK. Any new program will ask, and if you just made it happen, then give it a one-time YES. If you're not sure about a program, set it to ASK for everything. You can google for those programs and find out what they do.
Try http://www.theeldergeek.com/services_guide.htm to search for them.