Open Ports

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How can i make sure i dont have open ports on my computer?

[Maverick811]

Well, if you've got services running such as web-serving, email hosting, etc., your computer will have open ports. Services open ports for data connections. So if you have services running that aren't needed, say you've got a copy of Windows 2000 running IIS (which would open port 80), shutting the service down, uninstalling IIS, etc., will keep that port from being opened on your machine. It makes sense to shut down all services that are not needed for your machine.

Since you will have a few ports open on your machine, it's an extremely good idea to be running some sort of firewall (hardware or software, or both). There are all kinds of firewall solutions, free and purchased. This has been talked about extensively on the forums so a quick search will yield plenty of results...

Further, it's a good idea once you have a firewall in place to scan your machine and see if the firewall is actually doing it's job.. There are online scans which you can use as well as doing the job yourself from another PC.

[]D_][_][v][_]D]

thanx that helped a lot

[whizkid2300]

oK if you are running windows do Netstat -a or -n and that will show you all the open ports on your machine.

Whizkid2300

[Grinler]

What OS are you running?

[aero]

i found a website that will check for open ports. go to www.grc.com

[dcongram]

Is this question related to the hacking question posted earlier ?