Should you turn your computer off with a broadband connection?

[OneOfOne]

My wife's daughter insists on leaving her computer on, even when no-one is home, perhaps for 6 hours or more. Other than the waste of energy and cost, I have heard from somewhere that it is not a good idea to leave a computer turned on that has a broadband connection. We have Nortons virus and firewall (when the registration runs out I think I will change to something less hungry) with a wireless broadband connection. Her computer is directly connected (100Mbits) and my computer, laptop and iPaq are connected over the wireless connection. When not in use they are always turned off.

My understanding is that it is possible for hackers to automatically search for live connections and may be able to hack into the computer to gain access to your connection. I am also worried that other applications that you just "must have" like LimeWire, iTunes etc could be using the connection to allow file sharing etc when you are not using it. TaskManager is more than two screens long and she always complains about how slow it is (hmmm can't work out why?) Any thoughts?

At the moment if I come home and the computer is left on, I just "turn it off" and never shutdown properly, in fact if I am peeved enough I will start up a number of applications and turn it off before they are completely started :evil: Unfortunately, this has only caused one "improper shutdown" so far :(

[Zuts]

Hi,

I think the only relevant argument is that it is a waste of power. If you have power management turned on then this should be minimal.

If a hacker can get you then they can get you while you are using it, they dont have to wait until you go away. As long as you have a natted router and antivirus then you should be completely safe.

As far as itunes, emule et al sucking up your bandwidth you can monitor this; also it is possible to set emule etc to limit them to a certain amount of upload bandwidth.

Anyway, my teenage daughter is the same, it annoys the hell out of me but I have leant to live with it :)

Paul

[programmer]

What is her reasoning for leaving it on?

this wouldn't amount to much, but still doesn't make sense to waste it

If correctly configured, that should keep you pretty safe

That's always possible, and if you're infected with trojans (if your daughter is prone to opening spam email, etc.) then it's a problem. It's easy enough to connect to a wireless access point. I'm assuming you have security turned on with your wireless connection and at least a 20-character random (non dictionary) encryption key.

They will because that's what they're all about, especially if you have left default settings (upload limits, etc)

Is that 2 screens of 'applications' or 'processes'? If applications, that's pretty over the top!

Not sure what you're trying to achieve here.. just the annoyance factor? :)

[Barrykgerdes]

As it was said before. A good firewall will keep most of the nasties away. But a wireless network will allow alsorts of computers in range use your internet.

I had this trouble once but turned my modem off and the computer stayed connected to the internet through someone else's system. My wireless now is set for exclusive mac addresses and I don't have any trouble.

At the moment I have installed a program called "logmein" that allows me to access my computer anywhere by logging on through the internet. However if I can use it from the remote I am sure a commited hacker could also get in so there is nothing on my computer that you can't already find on the internet.

The main thing to remember is that if you have your computer on the internet don't put anything on it that you don't want to share with the world. Keep a separate computer for this and transfer any files you need by disk. No matter what you do there are so many holes in Microsoft's operating systems (for their own use) that nothing is 100% secure.

On the subject of slowing of computers. I have a lovely 2.5GH Pentium 4 computer in my garage that I was given by a friend who got another because it had become so slow and no one could fix it. She had children that had ipods, Limewire etc and Norton Anti Virus that got into a loop and 2000 errors in the registry. It took me 6 hours to remove all the garbage and clean it up but now it simply flies as a basic computer on my network and does real processing work for me.

Barry

[programmer]

Don't forget there's more harm to be done than 'just' stealing stuff on your pc. Your pc could become a 'zombie' doing lots of damage such as sending spam email, etc. as part of a larger network of controlled pc's.

Edit: I believe that MAC address filtering is not as secure as having a large, random security key and using WEP.

[snowyskiesau]

I have three computers on my home network and they are always powered on.

Major reason is that I work in IT and some contracts allow me to work from home. When at a customer site, I can connect into my home systems if there is something I need to retrieve. On occasions, I perform remote monitoring of servers and alerts need to get back to my servers.
I run a hardware firewall than does not allow any incoming connections except via a VPN.

I do have a wireless access point for use with the laptop (and a TV set top box connection) which I have this configured for MAC address filtering. So far, no one has been able to get free internet access via the wireless connection.

[acropolite]

If you run skype and leave your machine on all the time with skype logged on you will be used as a supernode, i.e. your machine will carry some connection details and will incurr traffic for (some) other users initial call setup. On large networks with many skype users the resource used can be significant, that's the reason why many corporations and government bodies ban the use of skype. If you're curious, google skype supernode.

[programmer]

There are definitely lots of good reasons for leaving PCs on, even for home users (overnight downloads, etc) but I'm not sure why the OP's daughter needs to.


Or more likely, nobody has tried :)

Don't get me wrong I've left my wireless AP unprotected many times and never had anyone use it. Chances are pretty low, as they have to be physically close, i.e. a neighbour or someone parked out the front of your house.

[Benny L]

my step brother leaves his computer on 24-7.. drives me bananas! so i know how the OP feels :sadeyes:

So i wait until he gets home and flick the switch in the meter box to exact my revenge lol

[snowyskiesau]

I've had a few attempts to connect to my wireless access point. I have a monitor set up such that if too many attempts are made to connect from an unknown MAC address, the access point is disabled for a while. Continued attempts result in the access point being disabled. As I only use this for the set top box (and rarely the laptop), should the access point be disabled, it's not a major problem.

I have been tempted to try this option one day :)
http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html (http://www.ex-parrot.com/%7Epete/upside-down-ternet.html)

[Glenhuon]

We have 4 computers here 3 of which are connected to the net through a 4 port modem. They all get turned off every night and often through the day if no one is going to be home. The excuse that they don't use much power doesn't hold water. Indivdually not much, but collectively (e.g. 1,000 puters left on overnight and not being used) the power waste becomes much more significant.
I can understand where your coming from Re a two page Task manager, sounds pretty close to my step daughters machine :rolleyes:. Why they have to have all these programs running at once I'll never know. Jacqui was on the 4th port of our modem for one month, our monthly usage doubled and we were "shaped" to 64 for the first time ever. She is now back on dial up, permanently.
A good way to speed up your machine is to dump anything connected with Norton. It is a resource hog of the first water, and not as effective as many other internet security programs. I got rid of it after it allowed a virus through on two occasions. Have used AVG+Firewall for over two years now with no problems.

Bill

[programmer]

That's great :D

[Barrykgerdes]

Yes I know that your computer can become someone else's slave but I think I have avoided that OK. I don't visit the sites that usually harbour these trojans and I don't read junk e-mail. Just consign it to the garbage.

Mac addresses are not totally secure as you say but I live in a residential area where there are only about 15 houses within the RF radius, about half of them have wireless routers but the owners are non techo. (I am the neighbourhood nerd and have set up all their computers at some time). It was the wireless routers that gave me some trouble that they probably did not have a clue about and rather than encryption I settled for mac addresses as the easiest. I actually provide free wireless 1500/256 internet access for two of my neighbours who can't get ADSL. Between use we still only use 1/4 of my allowance.

As a reward these neighbours are always trying to do things for me. While I was out the other day. I came home to find the front garden all re-landscaped and the back yard mown. Another time I was given a very expensive new HO locomotve that had been found in his warehouse with no owner. It pays to be "right neighbourly"

Barry

[programmer]

What the.. ? Wow I wouldn't mind getting free gardening for a little internet usage! I'm friendly with the guy across the road who is an avid gardener, too.. :thumbsup: Might be too far away though

[g__day]

I would advocate put it behind a hardware firewall - such as most NAT routers have anyway, and yes run TrendMicro or Nortons or Zone Labs Suite software protections.

[Barrykgerdes]

Worth a try. Gardening is on list of the most tedious of chores, to be avoided at all costs. My range is about 100 metres at the front of the house but only about 25 metres at the back.

Barry

[OneOfOne]

In the big scheme, the power used by one computer may not be much....but if it was turned on at 10am (those admin logs come in handy) and she left for Uni by 11 and I come home at 5pm with the computer still on...it seems like a hell of a waste energy. Not just the computer though, lights left on. One day the heater was left on (she reckoned it was cold in the morning, ie. about 19 in the house). She would have left by lunch time and I came home to a stinking hot house of 26 degrees! Mind you it was 30 outside. Then I have to pay for the air conditioning to try to get the temperature down to a reasonable temperature by bed time, and opening the doors wouldn't help! Needless to say, I turned the lock on! Problem is you can't turn it on at all without entering the PIN. I would have thought you could just not change the setting, then I would just set it to 20 and leave it.

Oh, the task manager is processes running with no applications. We wore one computer out as it took 30 minutes to get to the login because it took so long for all the viruses to start up. We had someone remove them once and they got over a thousand of all varieties. Within a month most of them were back...

So now I do all my internet stuff on my computer and never bother to scan hers....not my problem any more. Mine runs much faster...except Nortons kicks in after a few minutes and takes all the CPU time...really must give it the flick. She doesn't know we have internet access on my computer and laptop, and she doesn't know the password either!

Starting up applications and turning off the computer can cause an "improper shutdown" which makes Windows do a scan disk at startup...which annoys the hell out of HER (revenge), but it doesn't seem to happen often. I might have a look at the power management and see if I can have it turn itself off after an hour or so of inactivity.

[programmer]

Well with all that going on the computer (idling) would be only a small part :) but I agree, turn it off..

well that's not so bad, EXCEPT one of those pages is probably all trojans!

If she just does browsing/chatting, maybe run in a virtual pc session each time and just delete the virtual session each time :D I'm joking of course... kind of.

There's very little you can do when the user of the pc does not care.. some things require the users' help unfortunately

[Dooghan]

I have my computer on 24/7. It's the most used device in my house. It gets used though out the day and into the night most days. I do have some power savings turned on. My NAT router gives me protection from the net but I also run a firewall on the computer. It's manly there for programs that make outbound connection. If I don't know what the program is that trying to make a outbound connection, then access is denied.

I'm a bit shocked that anyone thinks MAC address or WEP is secure. WEP keys can be cracked in under 60sec and MAC address in like 10sec. WEP was made be software engineers and not security people. It's a joke. I do have to say if you only have older hardware that only supports WEP then use it. It better then nothing. I would also be looking to see if I could upgrade to WPA by firmware. I use nothing less then a 63 character random encryption key (non dictionary) on my wireless (WPA) network. They say 20 is the minimum you should use.

As for MAC address. If your got a active wireless connections between your computer and the router. And I was to capture some of those packets between the 2 devices, I've got your MAC address. Then it's so easy to spoof the MAC address and make your router think my computer is your computer. The some goes with SSID. I've read and people have told me that it should be turned off. I can't see why. If you have got a active connection and someone is collecting the packets, then they can get your SSID from the packets

[JethroB76]

My thoughts too...go with WPA if you can

[programmer]

Yep agreed about MAC filtering as said previously. I did say WEP earlier when I meant WPA though :P

[Barrykgerdes]

Yes I agree that the encryption can be cracked even with long "passwords". Public keys are all mathmatical algorithms and if you can find the start point you have cracked the code.

Mac addresses are a convenient filter for me because I only need to stop accidental use of my internet by close neighbours who aren't on my net. If I really want to encrypt something I can generate my own exclusive random key that I will defy anyone to crack, but that means I have to pass the key to anyone who needs it which would defeat the object. I spent 25 years in defence cryptography maintaining the machines.

Barry

[joshman]

i don't see what the big deal is with viruses. store all your personal files on a removeable disk (second hdd and the like) and anyhting you download gets stored ina folder on the desktop.

if viruses attack, then simply keep the programs that work and are useful out of your downloads folder on teh desktop. format, and re-install. viruses gone, clean machine. no problems mate :thumbsup:

[jakob]

Barry, I'm interested in your cleanup of the P4.
Do yo have a good tool for this that you could recommend?

Regards Jakob

[programmer]

format.com? :rofl:

[Starkler]

I have seen this said also. I use a WPA key that I can remember rather than some 20+ character recommended military strength security.

Is there even such a thing as a wpa password cracker in the public domain that could threaten my 7 character passphrase? I doubt it.

[Barrykgerdes]

Format was not an option as I wanted to retain the Windows XP with service pack 2.

The main tool I used was patience! But some of the things I did were
Start Windows in safe mode and remove as many of the programs as possible. The first priority was Norton Anti Virus which caused most of the problems. Basically getting the computer to boot into a stable condition. Doing this was slow and tedious and required rebooting many times as I slowly got it out of the system. I also used a self booting CD I made that booted Dos 7.0 and had PCillan integrated into it. This did a virus check, there weren't any but it allowed me to erase lots of the garbage on the disk that was not integrated into the windows installation. This also was used to remove a large batch of temporary files from Windows including Windows internet tempory files and history. Some of these are difficult to remove completely using windows.

Next I ran a program called Registy Scrub that was a freeby from one of the computer magazines. This repaired hundreds of problems out of the registry.

After getting Norton out I was able to start the computer normally. I then continued to remove programs on the Windows list (add/remove programs). Most of these were programs to do with Ipod tunes, Internet games and other un-recognised software. I also got rid of all the cookies.

The 80 GB Hard disk started with about 60 GB of junk and I eventually got it down to about 3.5GB. With my basic suite of Nero, Office 2000, Photo Shop, The Gimp, Adobe Pro 6.0. partition magic, Drive image etc

I repeated the clean with Registry scrub and and Adware-se.

At this stage I had no virus program on it so I removed the hard disk and put it into my main computer that has PCillan on it and ran a full scan clean which removed a couple of trojans but found no other viruses.

The hard disk was then re-installed in its own computer. I partitioned it into two partitions C and D, I ran disk defragmentiser,then made an image of the clean operating system and stored it on Drive D. The computer now starts up very quickly and has no problems. It has no anti virus program at the moment but I only use it on the internet to collect source code for Stellarium which is connected via the router and it is only turned on when I need it.

Oh yes! I have now installed Tortoise SVN, Dev-Cpp, MinGW, Msys and a batch of dependancies for the compiler and regularly compile Stellarium on it. I also use it to cut data DVD's of Meccano manuals and magazines as it has a very good DVD burner.

Barry

[Dooghan]

HELL YES. Given enough computer power your password could be cracked in 1 hour or less. If it was me I would just and use your neighbours who's left theirs open. And yes there is a number of WPA password cracker programs on the net.

[programmer]

'Given enough computing power' is a wide open statement. According to this page (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=127), using a single PC, a 7 chacter passphrase will take some years to crack, if it consists of only alphanumeric characters. I don't think anyone is going to park a black van outside his house with 100 PCs to crack his home network in 'only' a few months or weeks. I think he's safe. I hope your passphrase is random however, or brute-force attacks could discover it in a much shorter period.

[Glenhuon]

Quote:
Oh, the task manager is processes running with no applications. We wore one computer out as it took 30 minutes to get to the login because it took so long for all the viruses to start up. We had someone remove them once and they got over a thousand of all varieties. Within a month most of them were back...
Quote:

HeHe looks very like the puter I had in for repair a couple of years back. The lady owner let her daughter use it for playing Sims etc. Not a good idea as it also had her business data on it. Report was running slow. Not surprising, she has the, so far unbeaten, record, 2,473 instances of spyware and trojans on one HDD. :lol:
Cleaned it up and installed the full version of Spyware Doctor and AVG anti virus, gave a quiet lecture on internet security and, as far as I know, no problems since.

Bill

[GTB_an_Owl]

sorry Bill

i once had a laptop that was previously being used in vietnam that had about 5600 variants on it

the reported problem ! - it's running a bit slow :lol: :lol: :lol:

geoff

[Stevo69]

IMHO a simple waste of power. Apart from downloading while you are out, or work requirements, I cannot think of one reason to leave a computer switched on.

And this whole argument of hackers on live broadband lines and other concerns are urban myths which perpetuate themselves to the point of becoming actual events in the minds of the common people. Ok, go ahead, shoot me down.......now!

[Ian Robinson]

My PC card wireless adapter for my ADSL is lucky to pick up the signal from the ADSL modem if I move the laptop to the other of the house.

There is no way I would share my account with anyone but my family (even if they had wireless adapters capable of picking up my modem's wireless transmitter and I gave them the option).... you would never know what other people are looking at , or what they are doing , and if you are the one who is paying for the link , you're the first one the cops will visit .... if they are pedofiles or terrorist supporters or scam artists it will be very hard to convince the law it wasn't you or you didn't know.

I turn off and unplug from the mains all my computers when they are not being used - I had a laptop fried by a lightning strike once and don't want to repeat the experience (took over 6 months of haggling to get a replacement laptop off GIO).

I also turn off my ADSL modem when it is not being used (I connect by wireless link to it with the laptop , the desktop is not connected to it at present (until I resolve the wireless adapter issue).... why waste power by staying connected.

[renormalised]

I pull the plugs and connection each and every night. No need to waste power.

[Glenhuon]

Yes, would slow it down a bit
That one takes the prize for sure. :rofl::rofl:

Bill

[TrevorW]

In the scheme of things no why not just turn everything on becuase at the end of the day the Govt and the utility suppliers really want you to use more otherwise they'd turn street lights off after 1:00pm like they used too

[Barrykgerdes]

My modem and wireless router run 24/7. I do turn the computers and printers off at night because they are not required all the time. I am in a position where I can trust my neighbours and am quite happy to let them log on to my ADSL as they are not able to get ADSL themselves. The rewards non monetry are worth it.

As for the costs. I run the airconditioner nearly all the time and admit my quarterly electric bill of $350 and my monthly phone/ADSL bill $100 may be a bit extravagant, it is of no consequence to me as a poor pensioner who has a large surplus at the end of the financial year. The simple reason is good finacial management and a realistic budget.

Barry:P:hi::)

[Ian Robinson]

I turn the ADSL modem off when I go to bed or am not using it.

I unplug the computer when I am not using it.

:oops: already said that ....