Windows Online concerns/safety tips please

Hi all,

I've spent the last however long gaming on the Xbox mainly due to ease, the fact my mates are on there and also because I was paranoid about what I saw might have been the opening up of my PC/gateway/network to online connections in control of people far smarter than I.

I am however, about to take the plunge and wondered - is this a bit ridiculous? Can people actually get into my network whilst gaming any easier than if I was just on the internet anyway? Do magical ports on my router open up and leave me with my digital pants down?

And finally, is there anything I need to be aware of or any security I need to set (especially if joining multiplayer servers etc.)?

Appreciate honest but not too harsh answers!

Cheers in advance...

 

If your playing on steam it takes care of most of it for you. Similar story with uplay and origin. Only real issue is if your joining private servers which are a bit different. But as long as its major clan servers for example you will be fine again.

People can not view your IP address even if they are the host of the server they can see who your ISP is but they can't see anything else. Easier to get virus, Ect browsing Internet sites than it is gaming.

 

You can test your security by running some of the tests on Shields up.

 

When setting your password don't just replace i with 1 etc and try and create a password that is a mixture of upper & lower case characters, numbers and also things like plus symbol etc

If you are using Steam make sure that Steam Guard is activated so if someone does manage to hack your password it sends an email with authentication code to your registered address, so going on that make sure you have different passwords for each service.

 

I once joined a CSS server that opened up a bazzilion new emails in outlook courtesy of some sort of plugin they had running.