ok, i now ran the grc.com tests and it said i was totaly stealth ...

am i on the "safe" side now ?
first stealth is your firewall dropping packets without sending a response...basically the scanner says...hey you there...your firewall keeps its mouth shut and hopes the scanner goes away...the other possible responses are....ya i'm here...but my doors are locked and you can't come in...which isn't so good as someone can say...hmmm...they've got somthing to hide in there...maybe i'll go see if a window is open...and lastly...hey come on in...i'll leave the door open...and i'll be out for a couple of hours...make yourself at home...(this is an unfirewalled windows 9x response... )


be aware that grc doesn't seem to probe with udp ...i was happily sitting behind my linksys at home running grc.com saying that i was invisible...then for some fun (ya ok i need a life...) i went and did the same scan me shtick at dslreports...and i wasn't as invisible as i thought...it detected a closed udp port response...which means it raises a flag that something is sitting there..

so 3 lessons...

1 - linksys routers don't drop "all" scans it shows a closed for some udp ports (i replaced it with a watchguard soho which IS stealthed from a dslreports scan and is much much better firewall..a lot more expensive tho...)

2- grc.com isn't scanning for udp ports

3- never believe anyone that says you are safe (actually even grc.com does mention this...)