Port Forwarding Dangerous?

[Gohan]

Well, I know how to port forward, but to be honest I never really knew much about it.

So, is it dangerous to port forward in order to use a trusted program? If so, how dangerous? How easy would it be for someone to exploit an open port? What can I do about it without having to disable the port?

Thanks!

[Gwen]

port forwarding has just as much chance as being dangerous as any other port on your computer. You have hundreds of ports that are open and someone could easily hack into those other ports.

You only need to port forward if your computer is hooked up to a router. All port forwarding does is tell the router if traffic comes in on this port, send it to this computer. If you dont do port forwarding the router will not know if it should send traffic on port 4000 to your computer or your little sister's computer.

If your computer was not connected to a router, and you had your modem connected directly to your computer you would not need port forwarding at all….    the real question is is it dangerous to have open ports on your computer.  the answer is yes.... BUT almost all internet based programs open a port.... and like i said you always have some ports that are open by default.

[Drummerpete]

It's only dangerous if you're stupid.

[Gohan]

So just to clarify, opening a port to play a p2p game would not be any more dangerous not forwarding it?

[Drummerpete]

Correct.

[Gohan]

Ok thank you :D