What Does This Mean?

#1 ditzy

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Posted 28 June 2004 - 03:03 AM

When someone pings your computer, what does that mean? Is it harmless or harmful?

#2 Grinler

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Posted 28 June 2004 - 09:07 PM

When you ping a computer you are sending special packets to the other computer and then asking for a reply. With this you can determine how fast your connection is to the computer your pinging or even if the machine is on.

By itself pings do not cause any harm, but they do allow a remote user to determine if your computer is connected to the internet or not. Then they can try to learn more information about your computer with port scanning

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#3 ditzy

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Posted 29 June 2004 - 12:15 AM

Thanks Grinler.

But.....

Quote

By itself pings do not cause any harm, but they do allow a remote user to determine if your computer is connected to the internet or not. Then they can try to learn more information about your computer with port scanning

.....this means they are prying into what I do online, right? Is that illegal?

Oh, by the way, I didn't introduce myself. As you can tell by my name, I'm a tad ditzy when it comes to computers. Through another website, I found out about this one. So, yeah, cool.

#4 Grinler

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Posted 29 June 2004 - 09:53 AM

Pleasure to meet you Ditzy :thumbsup:

Welcome to BC

It is not illegal to ping another computer, but as you say, can be used to gather information about whether or not you are online. It is therefore wise to use a firewall that blocks pings so that this can not happen. Almost all firewalls will block pings by default

#5 Bluie

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Posted 29 June 2004 - 01:00 PM

Things change so fast that this may not be accurate any more. But it used to be that a lot of the pings were your dialup ISP checking connection to be sure it was still active.

#6 ditzy

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Posted 03 August 2004 - 05:08 PM

Hey

Received an email regarding someone responding to this thread. BUT, there is no latest post.
Was it deleted? If so, why?

#7 Guest_brunt_*

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Posted 03 August 2004 - 05:11 PM

Grinler, on Jun 29 2004, 09:53 AM, said:

Pleasure to meet you Ditzy :thumbsup:

Is this whatn your missing ditzy?

#8 Bluie

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Posted 04 August 2004 - 12:33 PM

ditz the board had a glitch and had to be reloaded to a back up so a few posts were lost.

#9 ditzy

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Posted 07 August 2004 - 10:23 PM

No brunt.
Thanks Bluie.

#10 cowsgonemadd3

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Posted 07 August 2004 - 10:29 PM

Many tipes of pings even good ones! Your internet provider can use them to check your connection speed! Some are helpfull others are either annoyance or no good!