Does turning off remote access keep me safer?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for
Askleo.com.
Hey, if you're not signed up for my weekly confident computing newsletter, you'll get
tips, tricks, and answers like this one in your inbox every week.
Com newsletter to sign up.
Here's today's question.
I turned off anything I could find
on my PC that had anything to do with remote access.
Am I at least safer from outside attacks?
Well, technically, yeah, you are safer, but I can pretty much guarantee you
that you are not as safe as you think, and I don't want what you've done,
which is fine, to lull you into a false sense of security.
Let me first start by showing you
the setting that I suspect you're likely talking about.
I'm going to search for remote, and I'm going to you can see there,
remote desktop settings, that is the item you want to look at.
It's similar in Windows 10, but we're looking at Windows 11 here.
In the Settings app, there is this thing called remote desktop.
I suspect what you've done is you've turned it off like that.
You'll have to confirm, that's fine.
I think in older versions of Windows, we didn't have the extra confirmation
step, but this basically turns off remote desktop in Windows.
That's it.
That's the remote access stuff in Windows.
And unfortunately, it's not turning off everything that you think it is.
To begin with, all this really does is
turns off Windows built in Remote Desktop Protocol.
You can still use Remote Desktop
from this machine to connect to another machine,
but with Remote Desktop turned off, you cannot use the Remote Desktop Protocol
call to access this machine from somewhere else.
However, this is not what scammers use.
This is not what is
the problem when it comes to the so called remote access scam.
Scammers actually don't care if you've got this turned on or off because there are
many, many, many alternatives to doing remote access.
And in fact, we've talked about some of them here.
Tools like Team Viewer, Chrome Remote Desktop, Log Me In.
There's a bunch of different tools that will allow you to do exactly this.
For legitimate purposes.
These are valuable tools.
They're very useful in many, many different situations.
But scammers know that these tools are
legitimate and have reasonable reputations, and then they abuse them.
How do they abuse them? Well,
they will contact you and they will say, Hey, the scenario is usually something
along the lines of, Your computer is causing problems on the internet.
Let me have remote access to your machine so that I can fix it for you.
What they then have you do is download
remote access software, install it, run it, and then give them access.
Remote desktop, the setting in Windows, was never involved.
What they tricked you into doing was downloading and using an alternative.
Like I said, the alternatives are fine.
They're useful pieces of software.
It's just when scammers suggest you do that, that's where the problem begins.
So how do you protect yourself?
Well, the good news here is that you're actually
already protected in a large degree by your router because the router prevents
random incoming connections to your computer.
These remote access tools,
they actually don't initiate a connection from the outside.
The reason you have to download the software and install it on your
machine is it's then your machine that reaches out and initiates the connection.
Your participation is required to make that happen.
And that's good news because that means you have the option
of evaluating whether or not what you're about to do is the right thing to do.
So the solution then is actually really straight forward.
Choose what to run.
Disable Remote Desktop if you want.
There's no harm in doing that.
You can turn it back on later if you want to.
It's just not really that important for this scenario.
Choose not to install any additional
remote access tools or choose not to leave them running continuously.
For example, on most of my machines, as a backup way to communicate
with my other machines, I have Remote PC installed, but I don't have it running.
It's something that it's available if I need it.
If I'm somewhere where some of my other
alternatives won't work, I can use Remote PC to get to my PC.
But in order to do that, that software has to be run on that machine first.
So it's not always there,
it's not always open, and it's not always ready to accept an incoming connection.
In conferences and online meetings,
Teams, Zoom, go to meeting, those kinds of things,
only share your desktop or share access to people that you know and
trust.
That's one of the themes here, because the other one is only download
and install remote access software from people you know and trust.
And trust.
If someone calls you randomly, you have no idea who they are,
but they're trying to get you to install something on your PC, don't do it.
Do some research.
Reach out to people you do trust, but do not just install remote access
software or anything at the behest of someone you have no idea who they are.
That is the key to staying safe with remote access.
And of course, always do everything you
should already be doing to keep your machines safe on the internet.
Keep it up to date,
make sure your security software is running, use strong and long passwords,
two factor authentication, everything, all the good stuff that we already know.
We already have this list of the litany of security steps that I so often refer
to, but it's those basic steps that are the foundation.
On top of that foundation, build in skepticism.
Again, don't install stuff from people you don't understand.
That's how you prevent remote access.
For updates, for comments, and links to related topics, visit
Askleo.com/6403.
I'm Leo Notenboom, and this is Askleo.com.
Thanks for watching.