NEW COMPUTER IP!?(please help)

Edit out your email address. All it does is invite spam.

If you are behind a router you can assign your computer a static IP (see TCP/IP properties), but there's little point in doing so.

If you are talking about your public IP you can disconnect until after your lease expires. Then you may get a different IP next time.

 

Just knowing somebody's public IP address does little good (or harm, depending on how you look at it). If you are protected behind a router and/or using a firewall about all somebody could do is mount a denial of service attack. Since this would put them at risk of detection nobody is likely to do that unless you are an inviting target--such as a major company or the Department of Defense, etc.

Most malware infections happen because we are lured into opening the wrong email attachments or visiting the wrong web sites or neglect to run an up to date anti-virus program. So, the only real advice is to keep your guard up and learn from mistakes.

 

Yes, but there is a serious omission in my previous post. There are some vulnerabilities in Windows and other applications that allow the bad guys to get to us without our cooperation. As these holes are discovered they are patched within hours (or at least within a month or two). So it is also important for us to keep current on critical (security) updates to Windows, browsers, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Java, etc.