I’m stunned. Ever since the last school year ended, my Gmail-powered domain-based email account is blocked inside De La Salle University – Dasmarinas‘ content filtering system. This dastardly act of evil is evidenced by the screencap below:

The University uses DansGuardian as its content filtering system within its local area network. Basically it:

DansGuardian is an award winning Open Source web content filter which currently runs on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS X, HP-UX, and Solaris. It filters the actual content of pages based on many methods including phrase matching, PICS filtering and URL filtering. It does not purely filter based on a banned list of sites like lesser totally commercial filters.

DansGuardian is designed to be completely flexible and allows you to tailor the filtering to your exact needs. It can be as draconian or as unobstructive as you want. The default settings are geared towards what a primary school might want but DansGuardian puts you in control of what you want to block.

According to DansGuardian, my email is blocked because it found a banned phrase in the URI “http://mail.google.com/a/jrocas.com.ph/” the strange thing is, what is the “banned phrase” in this URI? Is it “mail.google.com/a/” or my domain “jrocas.com.ph”?

If it’s Google the ITC department is blocking, why then can anyone else access their Gmail accounts? And why would the school block access to Google from inside campus? Is the Chinese government the new owners of DLSUD now?

Now if it is my own domain “http://jrocas.com.ph” that they’re blocking, how come I could have full access my blog using the school’s computers? If they are really blocking my domain, what’s their reason? Is it because I’m starting to blog more about my criticisms of the University’s administration or is it because I’m known at campus to be one of the very few left-leaning activists who are anti-GMA? (I know a handful of faculty and school administrators who are die-hard pro-GMA’ers.)

On top of all this, isn’t it an act of stifling my rights to freedom of expression and access to information? Hmmm, this is really driving me nuts as denying me access to my email is like taking away half of my brain. Now that the new school year is about to open and my activities both inside and outside the classroom will soon pick up again, I would really need access to my email using the school’s network of which I pay for with my tuition money!

Now I know some of the good people from the ITC department reads this blog once and a while, and if you do, please get in touch with me regarding this matter, and please respond to the email I sent. Lastly, unblock my e-mail account please!

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In the run-up to upgrading to the upcoming major release of WordPress 2.3, I was reminded to update my ZoneAlarm firewall to the latest version, 7.0.4

Updating or upgrading my firewall is a top priority in to-do-list of PC maintenance so after blogging over at Sumilang, I cleaned up the desktop to make way for the upgrade of ZoneAlarm. After all, when installing or updating software in Windows, it’s wise to close all the other apps otherwise Windows might screw things up again.

I’ve been using ZoneAlarm as my firewall for well over 3 years now and so far, I’ve been a happy user. Of course I’m using just the free version which is their basic firewall. Truth is, I don’t have the money to buy the full ZoneAlarm security suite and I’m strict on not using the hacked or pirated versions of the software because as far as my PC security is concerned, legitimate and legal copies is a must even though I could easily get them for less than $5.00 here in the Philippines.

Besides, the free basic firewall works just fine and I don’t want another bloatware to strain my PC and clutter the hardisk. That’s the complain I have against the mainstream security apps like Norton, Tren-Micro’s Internet Security etc, add on their pricey 1-year license and it’s a no brainer why I dropped it and went on the search for a good and free firewall. Thank heavens there’s ZoneAlarm.

The latest version I upgraded to is version 7.0.4 which is for Windows XP/2000 users only. Vista users instead need to download ZoneAlarm version 7.1 which is exclusively built for them. Don’t worry though, they still offer the basic free edition of this neat and effective firewall.

If you’re still not using ZoneAlarm firewall, I suggest you have a look at it, give it a try and I’m sure you’d be satisfied. Feeling cautious? Here’s a few know-how about the ZoneAlarm firewall:

System Requirements:

Vista (32-bit):

• Pentium III 800 MHz or higher
• Minimum system RAM: 512 MB
• 50MB of available hard disk space. Internet access.

Windows XP/2000 Pro:

• Pentium III 450 MHz or higher
• Minimum system RAM: 128 MB
• 50MB of available hard disk space. Internet access.

Supported Protocols for Email Protection

• POP3 (Incoming only) — available in all ZoneAlarm products
• SMTP (Outgoing only) — available in all ZoneAlarm products except free ZoneAlarm
• HTTP (Junk email filtering in conjunction with Outlook or Outlook Express) — available in ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite only
• IMAP4 (Incoming only) – IMAP4 is not supported for virus scanning of email. — available only with ZoneAlarm Antivirus and ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite

Support Browsers

• Internet Explorer 5.5, 6.0 SP1, 6.0 SP2 7.0 SP2
• Netscape Navigator 7.2, 8.0 Beta
• FireFox 1.00 and higher
• MSN Explorer 6.0 and higher
• AOL 9.0

Compatible IM Clients

• MSN 6.2.0205 and higher
• Windows Messenger 4.7.0.2009 and higher
• Yahoo! IM 5.5.1226 and higher
• Yahoo! Japan IM* 5.1.0.1095 and higher
• AOL IM 5.2.3292 and higher
• ICQ Pro 2003b and higher
• ICQ Lite 5.0 and higher
• Trillian (/MSN/YIM/AIM/ICQ) 0.74i and higher
• Trillian Pro (/MSN/YIM/AIM/ICQ) 1.0 and higher
• GAIM (/MSN/YIM/AIM/ICQ) 0.74 and higher
• Miranda (MSN/YIM/ICQ) 0.3.2 and higher

* – Japan Yahoo IM does not work with non-Japan Yahoo’s ID because it uses a different process: “YPagerJ.exe”

ZoneAlarm free firewall has kept my PC safe and secure from intruders from the net ever since I started using it a few years back and it has never failed me since. This may not be a paid review or write-up about ZoneAlarm (honest! ) but I highly recommend you use it and secure your PC.

Or do you use other firewalls? Are they for free? Let’s share stories.

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