I remember reading a post about a scare tactic email or pop-up used by McAfee or Norton to buy their product. Today I got a shady pop-up from ZoneAlarm. Tell me what you think about it.
Since ZA has never recognized avast!, it’s not surprising.
I’m sure if you had Symantec or McAfee, you wouldn’t get this message.
“Arr tis pure bull me hardy.” ;D
Don’t run shady products. 
Outpost Free is much better:
http://free.agnitum.com
http://download.cnet.com/Agnitum-Outpost-Firewall-Free/3000-10435_4-10913746.html
I’m using ZoneAlarm Pro & I didn’t get the “scare tactic pop-up”.
I agree, don’t use Outpost or Comodo!
IMHO, ZoneAlarm Pro & ZoneAlarm Free are the best fw’s.
If they ever get the problems & bugs out of OA & Privatefirewall
we might have two more fw’s to chose from.
The bugs are out of OA for quite some time now. Try it and fully compatible with Avast.
BTW, why do we now have 3 threads going on about this za issue??? 
That’s because you are not using ZoneAlarm Free. :
People have their favorite software firewalls and some like free ones.
I don’t think it’s a scare tactic, there’s more protection in the Pro version
in the form of hips.
Look in your ui of avast! 5, it says “increase your protection today and save 50%”.
If ZA’s warning of the dangers from a bad virus is a scare tactic,
then avast!'s “increase your protection today and save 50%” is a scare tactic.
Actually, Avast’s banner just offers 50% off AIS and explains additional features, while the ZA popup claims that the user’s PC is at risk if they do not upgrade. So ZA is the one using the “scare tactic.”
I quit using the ZA free years ago it got bloated, was a pain to network, annoying pop ups and had a lot of conflicts to resolve.
Joe
I switched to it because PC Tools Firewall had annoying for pop-ups for things like binaries changing and programs trying to use other programs, and I didn’t know what to allow or not, so I knew ZoneAlarm was simpler.