It was discovered last week that makers of the popular free ZoneAlarm firewall software include a portion of XML code that reports back information on your internet use. I’m still searching for a good replacement, but in the meantime here’s how you disable the code. The company says it will fix the “bug” soon. In the meantime you can work around it by adding:

# Block access to ZoneLabs Server
127.0.0.1 zonelabs.com
to your Windows host file.

I found this to be a pretty useful trip. Post any recommendations for ZA alternatives you might have.