grc.com

This is one of those sites that makes you realise just how vulnerable we all are on the net to invasion of our privacy.There are so many details logged on to most of our computers that theives would have a field day with some of the information if they hacked into one of them.Bank Account details,credit card numbers and other personal details are all there if someone who knows what they are doing goes looking. www.grc.com is a very useful site that will tell you just how much information you are leaking to the world every time you log onto the internet. It is really simple to use, go to the home page and click onto the test my ports button.grc will then ...  Read the complete review

Grc.com is the homepage of Steve Gibson, a famous security guru. As well as adverts for SpinRite (a hard drive diagnostics tool), there are several utilities to test your firewall (if you're using one). These are written in Assembly, so are really small and quick to download. They pass your IP address to grc.com, which then probes your computer to see if you've got any open ports which could be a security risk. Until a few months ago, that was all the site was about (well, there are a few other things on there such as demonstration of ClearType, which makes text look better on LCD displays). Recently, though, Steve's worked himself into a ...  Read the complete review

OK. So you run a firewall . You think that your computer is 100% safe from hackers. Think again. What you didnt realise is that small , secret programs are hiding somewhere on your computer and cause you lot of unknown havoc. And all long you didnt know that there were there. What these smart little utils do, can vary. But in their simplest form. They are litteraly "SPYWARE" . Yes, they spy on you, your computer, and any important files that you have, eg. addresses, bank details and so on. Now depending on their particular nature they use internet explorer or some form of internet related program you have running, to send information back to a ...  Read the complete review

Anyone who has installed a personal firewall like ZoneAlarm will have been amazed at the number of times the firewall rejects a connection attempt. So much so, in fact, that they tend to select the option not to pop up messages and just let the firewall quietly go about its business. Anyone who hasn't installed a firewall, and regularly connects to the internet, really ought to go and do it right now, then come back and read this. grc.com, the home pages of Gibson Research Corporation would probably linger in the depths of internet obscurity were it not for the useful ShieldsUP service provided by the site. This part of the site provides two services; ...  Read the complete review

When I first made a visit to grc.com I thought it was fantastic, best thing since sliced bread. Being a novice at computer security I scanned my machine with the port probing facility to find that my port 139 NetBIOS session was open, this caused me to panic. But luckily, I thought, Steve Gibson (author of the site) had left a link with various instructions for removing this 'security threat' and off I went to study 'unbinding my netbios from my TCP/IP' I managed to complete this task and felt rather pleased with myself as the scan at grc now shown no open ports, however being the type of person I am I wanted to know more about NetBIOS and its ...  Read the complete review