Monitoring Internet Activity for Windows and macOS

Monitoring your computer’s Internet activity is a powerful tool, enabling you to:

• keep an eye on background processes
• reveal viruses and other malware
• expose unauthorized access
• monitor running programs
• log process activity

..and much more. The best part? It’s super-easy. Here’s how I do it on Win XP:

1. Open the command prompt and type “netstat -n 5 > scan.txt”
2. After a minute or two (or any amount of time), press Ctrl+C to stop monitoring
3. Type “scan.txt” to open the log file and check the results

There are many ways to modify the log output using various parameters. Here are a couple of alternate commands you can try:

• netstat -b 5 > scan.txt
• netstat -nao 5 > scan.txt

The second command provides PID numbers that may be verified against running processes in the Windows Task Manager (under View > Select Column..). Feel free to terminate any processes running unwanted TCP connections. For a complete list of netstat parameters, type “netstat help” in the command prompt.

Here’s how I do it on Mac OSX:

1. Open Terminal and type “netstat -b >> scan.txt”
2. After a minute or two (or any amount of time), press Ctrl+C to stop monitoring
3. Type “more scan.txt” to open the log file and check the results

Happy Monitoring!

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Web Developer. Security Specialist. WordPress Buff.