This post shows how to see the websites your computer is secretly connecting to. Your PC (Personal Computer, most commonly laptops) makes lots of Internet connections in a day’s business, and not all of them are necessarily sites you are aware connections are happening with. Whereas some of these connections are harmless, there is always a chance that you have some malware, spyware, or adware using your Internet connection in the background without your knowledge. Here is how to notice what is going on under the hood.
We are covering a way you can view your PC’s active connections in this article. The method uses the good old netstatcommand from PowerShell or the Command Prompt. It will enable you to see the websites your computer is secretly connecting to.
Related:
6 Ways to Secure Your Webcam on a Laptop
Cybersecurity – What it is and why you need to be paying attention.
Check Active Connections with PowerShell (or Command Prompt)
The method uses the netstat command to generate a list of everything that has made an Internet connection in a specified amount of time. You can do this on any PC running Windows, from Windows XP Service Pack 2 all the way up to Windows 10. And, you can do it using either PowerShell or Command Prompt. The command works the same in both.
If you are using Windows 8 or 10, fire up PowerShell as an administrator by hitting Windows+X. And then select “PowerShell (Admin)” from the Power User menu. If you are using the Command Prompt instead, you also have to run that as an administrator.
At the prompt, type the following command, and then press Enter.
netstat -abf 5 > activity.txt We’re using four modifiers on the netstat command. The --a option tells it to show all connections and listening ports. The --b option adds what application is making the connection to the results. The --f option displays the full DNS name for each connection option, so that you can more easily understand where the connections are being made. The 5 option causes the command to poll every five seconds for connections (to make it more easy to track what is going on). We’re then using the piping symbol “>” to save the results to a text file named “activity.txt.” After issuing the command, wait a couple of minutes, and then press Ctrl+C to stop the recording of data.
When you’ve stopped recording data, you’ll need to open the activity.txt file to see the results. You can open the file in Notepad immediately from the PowerShell prompt by just typing “activity.txt” and then hitting Enter.
The text file is stored in the \Windows\System32 folder if you want to find it later or open it in a different editor.
The activity.txt file lists all processes on your computer (browsers, IM clients, email programs, etc.) that have made an Internet connection in the time during which you left the command running. This includes both established connections and open ports on which apps or services are listening for traffic. The file also lists which processes are connected to which websites.
That is how you can view the websites your computer is secretly connecting to.