I looked at the list of programs allowed to communicate through the Windows 7 firewall. Soluto, Dropbox, Webkit, Teamviewer, iTunes, Core Networking and Network Discovery were listed.
Seeing Microsoft's mild warning that any program allowed through the firewall punches a small hole against which there's a small risk of hackers etc getting through, I decided to block all but the last 2 listed above. (Getting braver, I since blocked all incoming connections to see what breaks - nothing so far).
Surprisingly, Dropbox seems to work perfectly and I'm not fussed about the others, anyway.
But I was surprised that I did not see in the list programs such as: Evernote, IE, Firefox, Chrome, iPlayer Desktop, Windows Update, NVIDIA Updater.......etc. So why are they not listed whereas others are?
Is the answer something like: the ones not mentioned use Port 80, which is always open specifically for Internet traffic, whereas those other listed programs use different ports allocated each time that program is opened?
If that is the answer then surely the permanently-open Port 80 is far more of a risk than some randomly allocated port which is opened only when a particular program is occasionally used?
Many thanks and apologies for such a basic question.
Martin
Seeing Microsoft's mild warning that any program allowed through the firewall punches a small hole against which there's a small risk of hackers etc getting through, I decided to block all but the last 2 listed above. (Getting braver, I since blocked all incoming connections to see what breaks - nothing so far).
Surprisingly, Dropbox seems to work perfectly and I'm not fussed about the others, anyway.
But I was surprised that I did not see in the list programs such as: Evernote, IE, Firefox, Chrome, iPlayer Desktop, Windows Update, NVIDIA Updater.......etc. So why are they not listed whereas others are?
Is the answer something like: the ones not mentioned use Port 80, which is always open specifically for Internet traffic, whereas those other listed programs use different ports allocated each time that program is opened?
If that is the answer then surely the permanently-open Port 80 is far more of a risk than some randomly allocated port which is opened only when a particular program is occasionally used?
Many thanks and apologies for such a basic question.
Martin
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram