561 Potentially Malicious Incoming Connections Blocked... And Counting... Help!

[cousins2kuk]

Evening all.

I recently had my computer 'Hijacked,' so I put in a new Hard Drive and used the resort disks to go back to an 'out of box state'.

Before connecting to the internet for the first time, went out and bought Mcafee and fully installed it.

Haven't had any viruses come down the line so far. But i am alarmed about the number of potentially malicious incoming Connections blocked. This is rising by the hour. After only 12 hours of being a computer again (as I put a fresh hard disk in this morning), I have had 561 incoming connections blocked!

Is this normal, or am I under serious attack here?

Hope you can help.

Chris

[exbrit]

That is simply a sampling of what the firewall has blocked and is there purely for information only.  Nothing to worry about.

[Hayton]

That's a lot, but some of the IP addresses can probably be allowed. You'll need to do a quick audit of some of the addresses listed to see who they are. McAfee, SiteAdvisor and Microsoft have address ranges that can be allowed. Google, Adobe and so forth - I choose not to allow them in case it's third-party advertising attempting to make a connection (it often is).

If you use AdBlock, DoNotTrackMe, and (in Firefox) NoScript that seems to cut down the connection attempts considerably because those add-ons deny access to various tracking companies.

[cousins2kuk]

Many thanks for the advice Ex_Brit and Hayton

Chris

[exbrit]

You're welcome and good luck 😉