Scoroncocolo Tech Pages | What's Going On Behind Your Back

Scoroncocolo TechPages

 only search Scoroncocolo

Windows Hacks and Facts

Cool Software.

XP and Vista tips and tweaks and lots of other geeky things for computer users

Blog Roll

LifeHacker


TechMeme


ReadWriteWeb


Online Tech Tips


How-To Geek


What's On My PC


Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts


evilfantasy's blog


AskBillFirst


Navigation

Home


Scoroncocolo's Intelligent Design


Goofing-off Page


The National Debt


The Beer Page


Me (Photo)


Contact Me




Recent Posts

Internet Memes


How To Jailbreak an iPhone


Do You Speak Chinese?


Re-boot or Restore iPhone


Scan and Create QR Codes


Turn Off Google Search Plus


Popular, Free Smartphone Apps


Some Things I Didn't Know About the iPhone 4s


iPhone 4s Siri and Voice Activation


The A-Google-A-Day Game


Websites Blocked by China


Google's New What Do You Love


Google's New Me On The Web and Google Alerts


The Les Paul Google Doodle Is the Best Google Doodle Ever


The Onion, Facebook and Literally Unbelievable.com


You Don't Need to Defrag Vista or Win 7 Hard Drives


Searching Google For Major News Stories Can Be Dangerous


Amazon Cloud Drive Music Player


Internet Explorer 9


Google Profile


Black Hat SEO Link Buying


Google Chrome 9 Browser


Listen To and Share Free Music With Mixtape.me


Go Mouseless - Use a Pc With Nothing But a Keyboard


Microsoft Windows 7 Keyboard Shortcuts


Microsoft Web Apps Vs Google Docs


Google Docs


Google Dashboard


Google Web History


HTML 5


Lock Down Your Facebook Privacy Settings


Firefox NoScript


Safe Web Browsing


Google's Free Services


Dropbox - File Storage, Syncing and Collaboration


Skydrive and Gladinet Cloud Desktop


Google Wave


Backup and Sync Files with SyncToy


Browsing the Web Inside a Sandbox


Windows Computer Tips and Tricks


Backup Your Music, Photos and Files for Free


StatCounter - Website Analytical Tool


Google PageRank


Long Tail SEO - How To Get More Hits to Your Blog


What Is SEO - SEO Do's and Dont's


Keyboard Shortcuts


What's the Best Web Browser?


Windows NotePad


Big Brother Is Watching


How to Create Web Pages - Part One


Windows Live Mesh


Vista's Flip3D and XP's WinFlip


Updating with Secunia and RadarSync


Live Sync


SkyDrive


What's Going On Behind Your Back


Vista Snipping Tool


Hide Files in JPEGs


Hide Files in Vista or XP


Input Director


Posted December 20, 2008

Bookmark and Share

What's Your Computer Doing Behind Your Back

Is Big Brother Watching You?

If you have third-party firewall software like ZoneAlarm, for instance, running on your Windows computer, you can probably see its Icon sitting in your Systems Trey down by your clock. Most of these Icons will glow red or blue depending on whether your computer is uploading or downloading data to or from the Internet. What's Your Computer Doing Behind Your Back
If you'll take the time to notice, even when your Web browser is turned off the firewall Icon in your systems Trey stays busy all the time. Even when you're not surfing the Web, your computer is in constant communication with the Internet. Try this sometime. Close all your open programs until there's nothing on your screen but your Desktop. Now, watch your firewall icon in the Systems Trey. It can't be still for over 15 seconds, can it?

So what sort of information and data is flowing to and from your computer to and from the Internet even when Internet Explorer or Firefox or any other web browser is turned off? Well, it could be lots of things. You probably have a bunch of programs running in the background exchanging information with their motherships to see if they are properly updated. But who knows?

There is a way to find out what your computer and the Internet are talking about behind your back. Follow these simple steps:

  • Click the Start button and then click Run. Type cmd in the Run box and press your Enter key.

  • At the Command prompt type netstat   -b  5   >  activity.txt and press your Enter key.

  • Wait for, oh say, a couple of minutes and then hold down your Ctrl key and type c.

  • Now, type activity.txt at the Command prompt and hit your Enter key and a Notepad file will open.

See What's Happening Behind your Back

This Notepad file will contain a log of every program on your computer that is responsible for initiating dialogue to and from the Internet during those two minutes you waited when following the instructions in the black box above. It will show the websites that these programs connected to. If you see something that looks suspicious, open Task Manager and click the Precesses tab. There you will see all (or almost all) of the programs running in the background. See if you can find the suspicious program there somewhere. If you find something that doesn't look right, like imabug.exe for instance, type it into Google and find out all you can about it. If you're sure it's up to no good, go back to the Task Manager and stop it from running. You may then want to find it on your computer and eliminate it. But be careful and don't delete something Windows needs in order to run.

There are probably a lot of things running in your computer's background that aren't represented by icons in your Systems Trey. If you have Apple software, like iTunes, on your computer, unless you have instructed it to do otherwise, it will be checking for updates every 15 minutes or so. If you have Java installed, it too is bad about constantly checking for updates. This is harmless activity but if you have dozens of programs all stumbling over one another to dial home every 15 minutes, that's going to slow down your computer not to mention your Internet browser.

So, why not run this simple little MS-DOS trick and see a sampling of what is going on behind your back?

Some Explanatory Notes

If you try this in Vista you will get the notepad document all right but instead of the information you were expecting, there will only be the words, "The requested operation requires elevation". This is because of Vists's UAC or User Account Control. You can avoid this by running DOS as Administrator. That's easy. Click Start > All Programs > Accessories and then right-click on Command Prompt and then click Run as administrator. When the UAC box comes up click Continue. Now you're at the command prompt so start typing and follow the instructions in the black box above.

Spacing is important in DOS. Both in Vista and XP you must type netstat without a space at the prompt (the blinking >) and then a space and then -b space 5 space > space then activity.txt. If that's confusing, just look at the first image I've provided above.

Thanks For Visiting the Tech Pages

Please add this page, or better yet my Home Page, to your Favorites and keep checking back. This page is a work in progress. how to create a Web pageI intend to edit it and add to it from time to time. In the meantime, if you have any ideas about how I could enhance the content of this page, please email me about it.


If you see anything in this post that needs to be corrected, email me about that, as well. I'll make the changes and make sure you get credit for spotting my mistakes. If you have any questions or comments about anything in this post or any other posts on the Tech Pages, email me at sjh@scoroncocolo.com and I will get back to you.


Don't forget to visit my Home Page at Scoroncocolo.com . And if that's how you got here in the first place, hit your Back button and look around. You can read my other Tech Pages posts by going to my home page and looking for them there. You can also look on the left side of this page and click on any of my Previous Posts.

To make this page and all of the other of my Tech Pages easy to find, type Ctrl + d to bookmark me and come back once a week or so and see what's new.

blog comments powered by Disqus
About - Services - Portfolio - Contact Us - Home Page

Copyright © Scoroncocolo 2008