Today’s giveaway belongs to the security category – Zemana AntiLogger detects and blocks suspicious behaviour that may compromise the security of your data.
Installation
Installation went smoothly, though you’ll need to restart your computer before Zemana AntiLogger can start working. You’ll need to key in the registration number provided into the program, and verification of the key requires an internet connection.
The expiration date, as you can see from above, was actually stated as 5th March 2010, or valid for a year. According to the website, updates to the program are available during this license period. I suppose the program would continue working beyond the 1 year license period, but updates wouldn’t be possible. I’m not sure what Zemana provides through its updates, though for such behaviour-based programs, updates are not as critical as compared to Anti-Virus software.
Ease of Use
Zemana AntiLogger is more of a “install it and forget it” program, doing its work in the background until it spots some suspicious activity.
The security alerts that come up are clearly written and presented. Not too much jargon is used, which means most users would be able to understand and make the correct decision.
The main program window itself is kept simple and uncluttered. Big buttons let you turn on or off monitoring for specific behaviour, such as key-logging, screen-logging, and modifications to important system files.
Features
I suppose most users or potential users would be most interested in how Zemana AntiLogger measures up in terms of preventing malicious behaviour on your computer. From my own tests, Zemana AntiLogger caught attempts to record keystrokes, monitor the clipboard and add programs to Window’s start up process. Zemana AntiLogger also terminates any programs you choose to block.
Some of the programs which brought up an alert were legitimate programs, but AntiLogger allows you to easily mark them as safe. A nice touch is that the program alerts you if a program marked “safe” tries to do something else which could be malicious. This means you won’t accidentally allow a harmful program to run after approving a seemingly safe activity.
The program keeps a log of all activity monitored by the program – including ones it automatically approves. The window is not resizable though, so you may need to scroll horizontally to view all the details.
One thing I like about Zemana AntiLogger is its small footprint. It took less than 5Mb of memory on my system. Compare it to Chameleon Clock:
Summary
Zemana AntiLogger offers good protection, and is easy to use. The alerts are written using simple language that don’t require too much computer knowledge to understand. It is also light on resources. There are some question marks over the importance of the updates, which end after a year, but for a heuristics-based program, I feel that program updates are less critical.
I feel that Zemana AntiLogger deserves a thumbs up, though it will not (and does not aim to) replace your firewall or anti-virus software. Using it with a good firewall (I’m using Comodo Firewall) and anti-virus software would give your computer excellent protection against threats.
Rating: 4/5
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/zemana-antilogger/
Free Alternatives
ThreatFire – I’ve been using this for a couple of weeks, and I don’t usually get too many alerts. It blocked and deleted some test dll-injectors successfully. There are 5 levels of sensitivity you can set it to. Resource usage is good, taking approximately 7Mb of memory.
Comodo Internet Security – Thanks to tamir for pointing this out. I haven’t got the chance to try out the whole suite, but I’m impressed by their firewall.
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