New Program alerts help you to give access permission to programs that need it - like your browser and e-mail programs. They also let you deny permission to programs that you don't want to access the Internet.

New Program alerts occur when the program asks for Internet or Local Network access for the first time.

To decide how to respond, consider these questions:

Do you recognise the program name? (for example 'Microsoft Outlook').

Does it make sense that this program would need Internet access? Are you actively using that program?

If you can answer 'yes' to both these questions, it's probably safe to answer Yes to the alert.

If you cannot answer 'yes' to both questions, click the More Info button. This will open a browser window and take you to ZoneAlarm Alert Advisor, which will analyse information about the alert and give you the most likely explanation for it.

If you're still not sure how to respond, click No and then see if any of your trusted programs are unable to function properly. If so, you can change the program's permission to Yes in the Programs Tab.

If you do not want an alert to pop-up every time the program tries to access the Internet check the box Remember this answer the next time I use this program.