New here. Trying to acquire as much info as possible regarding PINGING or being 'pinged'...and about unsolicited entrances through portals. I am not a computer wizard....but learning. I signed on to my computer this morning after having to reload AOL yesterday on my Dell Inspiron 1150(built in with McAfee firewall)...DELL automatically notified me the day before with a pop up that a SPYbot WORM has been detected and after trying to clean it, it failed. SO ...I get up this morning and check my firewall info and find that Nov. 5 (today) McAfee reports that someone in Beijing China has attempted an unsolicited connection to a TCP port with a specific # on my computer. I review the rest of the event info tracked by McAfee, which occurred on the day before (NOV. 4)and the TRACER on McAfee reveals that twice I was 'pinged' from someone in Washington, Dallas and Shreveport. OK. ??? ON NOV. 4, the first attempt earlier in the day as recorded by McAfee was an unsolicited attempt to connect through a port with a specific #. I did a little research and found that the most recent attempt (FROM BEJEING, CHINA..more specifically as McAfee recorded-I HAVE AN ADDRESS, the name of an individual, an E-mail and a fax and phone number. I wonder if this fellow is not attempting to track a virus...I googled his name and found that he is a professor of Computer Science..holds a P.H.D. Interesting to say the least... I wonder if the SPYbot did not enter my computer through the Yahoo mail I checked the other day...I am a member of a group at Yahoo and opened a mail that had an attractive title...and it was...PORNO. So..beware of hyperlinks! Thanks. ;]

Jazzkickerr, a little free advice (keep in mind it's worth what you pay for it),it's quite normal for your ISP to ping you from time to time to see if you're there and using the service. That might explain Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, etc. Some PHD in China? NEVER open an e-mail you don't know about, especially one which has an attachment. When in doubt, put it somewhere by itself (quarantine it) and scan first to be sure it's safe. Lots of nasties get spread that way. HTH. Ed in Texas.