Monitor your network connections with X-NetStat
In these times where computer crimes have become one of the most normal things it's nice to know that you can protect yourself.
Like Martin, i think that firewalls don't help that much (i have never encountered one that worked good enough) And when i found X-NetStat i found a really good solution to the problem of finding out more about the connections that your computer makes.
I'm not sure if X-NetStat is related to the netstat command on GNU/Linux systems but there are certainly some similarities.
Note:Â Development seems to have stopped in 2015, but the program worked fine on the newest versions of Windows at the time of writing this update.
X-NetStat
X-NetStat is a application that lists all the connections that your PC has as well as the program that has the connection. So you can see a lot of instances of your web browser for example when you just visited some sites.
But you can also see other connections that you didn't start. This can be an program like your anti virus that is updating, but it can also be the windows remote software connecting to an irc channel for example. When you see that happening you can make a rule with the right mouse button that will always kill that connection when it's made.
The standard version of X-NetStat displays connections and you can view, sort and kill them using it. The professional version of the software program supports additional options such as packet sniffing, mass killing of connections, remote access, whois lookup, or quick access to DOS commands.
The only downside to this program is that you have to look at the connections yourself, but it is an help if you have the feeling your pc has been hacked. Also i have switched to Linux (Kubuntu distro) as my main OS today as i was completely fed up with Windows, so if you have questions etc. about Linux you can ask them.
I know Martin will also switch to Linux in the future, so i won't make very detailed reports of my Linux experience but i will answer some questions and maybe try out some software if you want.
It needs to be noted that X-Netstat is a commercial program. If you just want a program that is highlighting all of your computer's connections, you may use the excellent CurrPorts instead. The program is a free portable application for Windows that highlights all open ports and all connections. While it does not provide you with the means to block those connections, it does highlight the information you need to take care of the issue.
Verdict
X-NetStat is a powerful program that lists all connections a Windows machine established or listens for, and the professional version adds to that with useful administrative tools and support for research options.
If you just want to know about the PC's connections or ports it listens on, use CurrPorts as it does that and is free. The downside to X-NetStat as far as I'm concerned is that it has not been updated since 2015. The last update on the company website dates back to January 2017.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.