What are some of the reasons some people try to connect to ports?

Question

Why are people trying to connect to ports on the computer and trying to connect to the person computer?

Answer 1

An open port allows entry into your computer. It's just like leaving your front door open or unlocked.

Hackers and those that install malicious software use computers to search the Internet for victims.

Their computer will send out pings to IP addresses. This is like someone ringing your front doorbell. The ping is saying "Hello is anyone home". Your firewall will answer the ping with either "Yes, the door is open, come in" or "No, the door is closed but, check back later and it might be open". Now the pinging computer knows their is a computer at this IP address. It will now continue to ping in hopes of finding the port open in order to gain entry into your computer.

The way to stop the continued pinging is to set the Firewall program to Stealth Mode. Stealth Mode does not answer the pings. The pinging computer will think there is not a computer connected to the IP address. The offending computer will then move to another IP address and ping looking for easy pickings.

Go into the HELP file of your Firewall program to learn how to put it in Stealth Mode.

Answer 2

different ports are for different services and invoke different responses from the computer - email, ftp, ping, telnet, web pages and the like. Some programs - like vnc - left running could potentialy allow people to access your machine