[Conne'isseur]

Is there any programs or something you can do that can prevent remote access? I recently had some tech support done through dell direct, and I could not believe someone could actually control my computer from another location. That is really disturbing. Does anyone have any ideas? Thank you

[Conne'isseur]

What I am actually talking about is remote desktop control. Is there a way to prevent this?

[taskmgr]

There's a lot of ways, the best is to install a firewall like ZoneAlarm.

The firewall needs to handle outbound connections in order to stop trojan horse programs you might accidentally download from creating a backdoor to your computer.

The firewall needs to handle application hijacking so that a trojan can't tunnel through a trusted application by launching it before opening the backdoor.

Most important, it needs to handle inbound connections (all firewalls do). Essentially this stops Joe Hax0r from finding your computer with a scan sweep and walking in your open door.

Be aware that when you get a firewall, some of your programs might not work right, first-person-shooter games for example require inbound connections on certain ports in order to host servers (the game will run fine, and you can connect to play with your friends, but you won't be able to host it). Additionally, the tech support representatives may ask you to disable it because it will likely block them from accessing your machine (obviously).

The other main thing to watch for is that nothing is running in memory and leaving doors open that you don't want. The outbound connections handling I mentioned above should deal with that, but if you want to see what's running in the background you can google hijackthis (kinda complicated) or go to start>run>taskmgr (shortcut ctrl+alt+del).

And last, if you want to stop things from starting up automatically, check to make sure they're out of your start>programs>startup folder, and then go to start>run>msconfig and check non-microsoft services and startup items. If you don't know what something is, google the name of the executable.

That's a good start.

[ViprXX]

In addition to taskmgr's suggestions, If you have windows XP installed then Right-Click your "My Computer' icon and goto properties then in the new window click the Remote tab and on the Remote tab section make sure both boxes are Unchecked then click apply then Ok.

[Conne'isseur]

Thank you Taskmgr and ViprXX. I really appreciate that. I will make sure I do this.