ZoneAlarm has turned to crap, it used to be an ok, but now it's just huge
bloat. I love simple tools, something like @Guard, back when it wasn't
owned by Symantec who made it bloatware as well, the fuckers.
Right now, I use nothing, as I am more secure by blocking the potential
holes right in the OS side. There is tools to see what kind of traffic is going
on in your comp too, but as I could care less I don't know much of these.
What I suggest you do is the following, Run your anti-virus program, followed
by a sweep with Ad-Aware and Spybot, if they find nothing then I got nothing.
Usually suspicious traffic is caused by spyware and just running one of those
programs is not a solution, as they use different methods and find different
things. It's fairly safe bet to remove everything those 2 programs find, I have
yet to run into any problems with either and I been using both for about a year
now. Also in Spybot you have an Immunize option, use it to block further crap.
Note tho, this might kill things like Spybar... I mean Googlebar and the like, but
if you are using IE and some plugin crap, well, you can only blame yourself
I of course suggest changing to a different browser as well, using IE is like asking
for trouble. I have everything else blocked in IE except Windows Update, nothing
else goes thru and IE is only used for WU.