With the increase of computer viruses, malware, and software companies with comprimised ethics, you may be wondering if your computer is connecting to the internet and sending out information without your knowledge. If you want to check this on your Windows machine, here's how to do so:

- Open a DOS terminal window. You can do this by going to Start -> Run, typing cmd and hitting Enter.

- Type the following command: netstat -b 4 > netTraffic.txt in the DOS window. Once you hit the Enter key, your network activity will be monitored every 5 seconds and the results will be put into the file called netTraffic.txt (you can call this something different if you like). If you are using an older version of Windows, Windows 2K for example, instead of -b in the command, you may need to use -a... basically, if the -b doesn't work, try using -a.

- This command will continue to run for as long as you leave the DOS window open. When you want to stop monitoring, you can just close the DOS window. Or you can hold down the Control key and hit the C key at the same time to stop the monitoring.

- Once the network monitoring is complete, you can open the file you sent the results to (netTraffic.txt in the example above) and you will see what sites you connected to as well as the program that establised the connection. If there is anything in there that looks fishy, you'll now know the name of the executable that is performing the unwanted outgoing connections and you can remove this executable.