British Expat Forum

I just saw a cute link on HoF, which got me thinking...I do turn my computer completely off at night. (mainly because someone told me to). Should I? Am I really at risk if I leave the screensaver on? And what happens to all those fishes on the screensaver when I turn it off? Do the hackers and spammers really have a more difficult time if the whole thing is off? Someone told me once it is like going to bed and leaving the door open...perhaps no one will come in, but why take the chance. So, all you guys who know this stuff, what is the scoop? If it matters, you may remember that I am still running M E on a 5 year old PC.

Personally, if nothing else than for the environment, I would turn it off.
There is an argument that if you are running a 24/7 Internet connection (like cable or DSL), then you are more vulnerable, but really you'd have to be running some kind of service, such as a web server, ftp server, mail server etc... for you to be really vulnerable.
However, some spyware, viruses etc.. do indeed act as some of the above, so if you are infected, your computer could be really busy during the night .

I generally switch off my desktop computer, but I have 2 servers running 24/7. Every morning I get a report outlining the activity during the previous day. It's amazing how much the machines are being attacked.
For instance, part of this mornings logs contained:


That was 28,496 attempts at guessing the password for my FTP server.

Every time I'm at this computer, I repeatedly get messages coming up saying "The remote computer has closed the connection". It is such a regular occurrence that I hardly notice them any more. This is simply somebody trying to take over my computer - again by guessing the password set on my VNC (remote desktop software which allows me to control my computer from a remote location) .

It's a battlefield out there and any time you can reduce your computer's exposure to the Internet, the better IMO.

Alan.

Never thought of that. I assumed it was a timeout after n retries on a crappy connection...

I use XP Home, but I believe ME is similar. You really should turn off your computer at night but there is more than one way to turn it off. The simple one is to simply shut it down completely. (Do this via the start button, not manually at the tower). Two other ways are to put it into "Stand By" mode and put it into "Hibernate" mode.

I always leave my computer in "Hibernate" mode. That's because it saves eveything I've got running as is, then effectively shuts down. When I fire it up again it's much faster than if it had been turned off completely and all the programmes I had open are back up again, just as they were when I shut down. Stand By mode is similar to Hibernate, except that nothing is saved. If there were to be a power interruption or the like, open programme contents would be lost. It is also a good practise to reboot the computer completely every so often, but I find I do that enough times when I have updated Windows or something else that requires a reboot.

In summary Justajester, try the Hibernate mode. If you haven't used it before you'll find it beats a complete shutdown hands down yet still turns off your computer for all the good reasons stated.