"• I am not a technology expert by any means - more of a beginner, which is why I use programs like ZoneAlarm. Unfortunately, it appears that ZA has decided to take advantage of persons such as myself to make money without providing any value. Back in December 2013, I purchased a two-year contract to use ZoneAlarm Extreme Security for use on an older machine running Windows XP. Last night, April 10 2014, I turned on the computer and it booted up normally. As occasionally happens, when the ZA program launched as part of start-up, I got a notification that a new update was available. So I clicked to update. The update proceeded and at the end of the installation I was asked to restart the machine, so I did. So the only thing I did on my computer yesterday was to turn it on, install the ZA update, and then restart - that's it. On the restart, the system got as far as my desktop, but when it tried to launch ZA, it crashed to the BSOD. I restarted several times, with exactly the same result every time. I even tried booting up in Safe Mode (and I tried all of the options available under Safe Mode bootup) and they were even worse - most of them crashed immediately to BSOD; others got as far as my password screen, but with all input devices disabled so that I could not enter any information via keyboard or move the cursor via mouse. In short, my computer has been completely disabled by this ZA update and I will now have to pay someone to fix the computer or to try to recover my files from the hard disk if they cannot figure out how to fix it. I did online chat with Technical Support at ZA, and they absolutely refused to render any assistance or take any responsibility for the events. I even asked for a refund of the remaining portion of my contract fee since their program was obviously not working, and they refused that as well. So now I have paid ZA to protect a computer that is dead because they killed it. I suppose that is one way of claiming that no viruses or hackers have compromised your system. I strongly recommend that anyone looking for security protection for their computer SHOULD NOT USE ZONEALARM. This company will deliver a dangerous product, and they will not stand behind it when something goes wrong. Please spread the word."